Amid increasing safety concerns, Jewish communal institutions in the Australia state of Victoria are making use of millions of dollars in federal government grants to fortify buildings, including installing security cameras, safe rooms, blast-resistant walls and airlock entryways.
According to The Age, the community made use of $12.3 million in Safer Communities Fund grants between 2018 and 2021 in the Macnamara area, which includes the Melbourne suburbs of St Kilda and Caulfield where most of the city’s Jewish community resides.
Starting in 2015 with Mount Scopus Memorial College, Jewish schools in Victoria began placing armed guards at their gates. In they years since, security measures have been ramped up in all areas of the Melbourne Jewish community.
Beth Weizmann Jewish Community Centre received a grant of $1.02 million for a blast-resistant wall. Yeshivah Beth Rivkah schools utilized a $960,000 grant for intercoms, a swipe-access system, evacuation and lockdown systems, blast-proof windows and a blast-proof perimeter fence. Sholem Aleichem kindergarten and primary school used $495,000 to build a safe room, install security cameras, a swipe access system and hire a security guard and a security trainer.
The increase in security measures is in response to multiple threats made against Jewish institutions and schools in the Melbourne area.
So far none of the perpetrators have followed through on their threats. But members of the community list attacks that have happened in other countries, such as the Tree of Life synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh in which 11 people were killed, as reasons for increasing security and vigilance.
Antisemitic incidents in Australia have soared over the past year, with 447 reported cases amounting to a 35 percent increase over the same period in 2020.
Julie Nathan, research director of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), told the organization’s annual conference in late November that the number of incidents was 167 higher than the annual national average of 280 recorded between 2013 and 2020.
Sam Tatarka, chair of the Beth Weizmann Jewish Community Centre, told The Age that enhanced security measures allow Jewish organizations to be less reliant on armed guards.
While federal grants make up a significant part of the funding used to increase security, it is still only a small part of the money that is needed to secure community infrastructure, the Jewish Community Council of Victoria said.
Its president, Daniel Aghion, told The Age that threats to the community from Islamist terrorists and neo-Nazis have become so pervasive that new synagogues now look like generic office buildings, with no outside features identifying them as Jewish.