Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky

Jewish groups welcomed $25 million in federal security grants for nonprofits, thanking Congress and the Trump administration for funding in line with previous years’ grants.

The Department of Homeland Security disbursed the funding last week, the vast majority of which goes to Jewish institutions. The money is congressionally mandated, but the Trump administration has attempted to roll back funding in other areas despite such mandates.

“These grants are essential to providing protection for our children as they go off to school every day, adults as they pray in our congregations and makes people in American communities across the country more secure on a day-to-day basis,” said Nathan Diament, the Washington director of the Orthodox Union, which has lobbied for the grants along with Agudath Israel of America and the Jewish Federations of North America.

The $25 million figure is consistent with funding in recent years; Congress had reduced the funding in the late 2000s during the recession.

“Homegrown violent extremists and international terrorist organizations continue to pose a threat of lethal violence,” said William Daroff, JFNA’s director, in a statement sent Thursday to JTA. “This existential threat bears out in the now regular and rising overt expressions of anti-Semitism across the country in the forms of graffiti, hate speech and other symbolic expressions, vandalism, assaults, and bomb threats.”

"Why I became the Forward’s Editor-in-Chief"

You are surely a friend of the Forward if you’re reading this. And so it’s with excitement and awe — of all that the Forward is, was, and will be — that I introduce myself to you as the Forward’s newest editor-in-chief.

And what a time to step into the leadership of this storied Jewish institution! For 129 years, the Forward has shaped and told the American Jewish story. I’m stepping in at an intense time for Jews the world over. We urgently need the Forward’s courageous, unflinching journalism — not only as a source of reliable information, but to provide inspiration, healing and hope.

That’s where you come in. Gifts of any size keep the Forward free and accessible to everyone and ensure we have the resources we need to power the Forward at this critical time for American Jews.

Don't just read the Forward - invest in it. That’s only possible thanks to the support of readers like you. Will you support our work today?

Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

$120 $180 $360 OTHER AMOUNT