The state of Ohio’s draft budget for 2024-2025 will include increases for Jewish community security and Holocaust education, according to a local Jewish leader.
Ohio Jewish Communities CEO Howie Beigelman told the Cleveland Jewish News that the state’s proposed budget will have a “positive impact [on] every Jewish community and probably every Jewish agency in the state.” The budget would double nonprofit security grants to $17 million over two years and also increases funds allocated to Holocaust education from $400,000 in the current budgetary period to $2.35 million in 2024-2025.
Beigelman said that the support is necessary to “help us protect [the Jewish community[ in a time of hate, in a time of surging antisemitism, in a time of increased polarization and of a breakdown of civil society.”
“This will help our community, which is unfortunately a top target of domestic and foreign terrorists, to be safer,” he added.
He noted that the funds that would be available for security grants are “the largest amount they’ve ever given” are are a recondition of the “changing threat landscape for the community and that the grants are actually meeting those needs.”
The expanded grants will allow for the purchase of additional security equipment, including surveillance cameras placed to expand the security of an institution’s permitter which he explained would allow them to “work with law enforcement and municipalities to put cameras up on high traffic areas.”
The proposed budget also includes money for security pilot programs that would see $150,000 allocated to the Jewish Federation of Cleveland for a test program involving an anti-terrorism cybersecurity, and $247,000 for the Mandel Jewish Community Center and Camp Wise to enhance security with tethered drone pilot programs.
Beigelman described the money for the programs as the culmination of years of meetings between Ohio Jewish leaders, Federation security directors and Ohio Department of Public Safety officials and later with state House members.
He also noted that the draft budget would greatly expand Holocaust education to “help us to combat Holocaust misinformation and misappropriation.
The funding includes $175,000 per year for the implementation of a state wide Holocaust curriculum for public schools.
“This is the first time that the state has given that much funding for Holocaust education-focused and genocide-focused” education, he said. “It’s an incredible amount.”
The proposed budget passed the Ohio House on April 26 and will be sent to the state Senate for a vote this month.