c. 1999 Religion News Service

(Rabbi Rudin is the national interreligious affairs director of the American Jewish Committee.)

UNDATED _ The upcoming Jewish High Holy Days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are times of festive family gatherings, special synagogue services and personal introspection. They provide a yearly chance to review relationships with God, family and friends.

However, this year, Judaism’s most sacred days will have a bittersweet edge because of the recent violent acts of domestic terrorism. Jews will joyfully follow the Rosh Hashanah tradition of dipping apples in honey as they pray for a safe and healthy new year. Jews will, as they have done for millennia, spiritually resonate to the stirring sound of the shofar (ram’s horn) as the religious year 5760 begins.

But figuratively and literally, they will also be glancing at the doors of their synagogue wondering whether an armed intruder will burst in and start shooting. They know, of course, it is highly unlikely. Yet …

The arson fires at three Sacramento synagogues in June, the gunfire aimed at six Chicago Jews as they returned from Sabbath services in July and the armed attack in August at a Los Angeles Jewish community center have created intense anger and high anxiety within the Jewish community.

Security measures will be sharply increased at crowded synagogues at this year’s Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services; measures that will surely become a permanent feature of the American religious landscape. But it was not always this way.

Not too many years ago, many Jewish institutions followed an”open door”policy at many community facilities including libraries, youth centers, seminaries, synagogues and museums. The public was generally welcome to visit or participate in various activities. Rabbis can easily recall the many times in the recent past when they worked alone at night or met with strangers in their synagogue offices. I certainly did that when I served congregations in the Midwest.

However, over the years that easygoing sense of security has disappeared in the wake of Arab terrorist attacks directed at Jews in Israel and elsewhere, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing in New York and the Oklahoma City assault two years later. Reluctantly, but inexorably, Jewish institutions have increased both their security staff and locked doors.

The once slow process of beefing up security will now accelerate because of American terrorists such as Buford Furrow, the Los Angeles shooter, and Benjamin Smith, the Illinois assailant.

Smith, a true believer in Nazi ideology, fired at his victims from a moving vehicle. Furrow’s crime was to enter a building and open fire on Jewish children because they”were in the way.” Following his capture, Furrow admitted to police that he shopped around Los Angeles Jewish institutions looking for a suitable location to kill. Two of his intended targets, the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the University of Judaism, had security measures in place and Furrow was forced to find an easier place to attack. Unfortunately, he came upon the North Valley Jewish Community Center, which, like many other such institutions, had no security deterrents.

It was at that friendly, accepting and nurturing center that a highly armed Furrow looked into the faces of little children and fired his 70 rounds of ammunition. Amazingly, no one was killed.

Not surprisingly, because Smith’s murder victims in the Midwest were black and Asian, and Furrow’s tragic victim in Los Angeles was a Filipino-American postman, American Jews feel an increased sense of solidarity with those communities. The bitter summer of 1999 has made clear that every American is a potential”target of opportunity”for home-grown terrorists.

That chilling reality can no longer be dismissed as”scare tactics.”Nor can people like Smith and Furrow, and their hate-filled organizations, be simply dismissed as”kooks.”They are cold ideological killers and there are many others waiting for a few moments of public attention and infamy.

Name any group in American society and there is someone out there now with a deadly weapon intent on murder:”evil”corporate executives whose children represent lucrative gain for murderous kidnappers, gays whose sexual practices are offensive or threatening, stock market day traders who allegedly provided bad advice, employers in almost any industry who ever fired an employee, high school classmates, physicians who perform abortions, blacks, Asians, Hispanics, Jews, college professors who failed to give a passing grade to a disgruntled student, prostitutes who are termed”dirty women,”presidents of the United States, civil rights leaders …

The list is endless and fully inclusive.

IR END RUDIN