The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews has given $1 million each to the Jewish Agency and Chabad to help them guard against anti-Semitic and terrorist attacks.

The money will go to fund infrastructure upgrades and security measures for Jewish communities around the world that are unable to fund security expenses on their own.

“There is no one group that has accepted responsibility for security of Jews around the world. The Jewish community is not stepping up to provide security,” Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, president and founder of IFCJ, told JTA. “This has become a major need to sustain Jewish life around the world and it is going to continue to grow.”

Forwarding the News

Thoughtful, balanced reporting from the Forward and around the web, bringing you updated news and analysis each day.

Terms(Required)

I agree to the Forward's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Email(Required)

Chabad will use its $1 million to create a central security system to protect its emissaries and upgrade security in its facilities that are at the most risk, according to Eckstein. The Jewish Agency will distribute its money via grants using an application process, he said.

The announcement of the grants came a week after a suicide bomber attacked a bus full of Israeli tourists at an airport in Bulgaria. Eckstein said that in recent months his organization provided $100,000 to Bulgaria through the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee to provide for the poor in the community as well as to upgrade security.

The IFCJ says it has given approximately $45 million for security-related issues in Israel and elsewhere since 2003, the year that bombings carried out in Istanbul, including some targeting synagogues, killed 67 people and injured hundreds.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

2X match on all Passover gifts!

$90 → $180 $180 → $360

$360 → $720

Other amount