Communitywide Security Trainings Could Benefit Baltimore Jewish Community

Safety and emergency preparedness have become increasingly important issues for the Jewish community over the past several years. They’ve felt increasingly important in recent weeks, too, after high-profile attacks at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., and in Boulder, Colorado.

That’s why several Baltimore community institutions are coming together to help hold a three-part training session running into early July to help prepare Baltimoreans on how to protect themselves and others during high-stress emergencies while building partnerships with first responders.

The sessions are being hosted through a collaboration between the Baltimore Jewish Council, The Associated, the Glen Neighborhood Improvement Association, Project Ezra, the Baltimore City Office of Emergency Management, the Mayor’s Office of Community Affairs and the Baltimore Police Department.

“Unfortunately, we live in a world where mass shootings are a real thing, and in the climate that we’re in with so much antisemitism, it behooves all the community to pay attention and try to place themselves strategically so that they can survive an active shooting attack. And it’s an unfortunate reality,” said Chedva Rose, host of the “Jewish Adulting” podcast and the crime and safety chair of the Glen Neighborhood Improvement Association.

The first of the three sessions features disaster preparedness, search and rescue, terrorism awareness and disaster psychology. Rose said there will be situation simulations with the goal of helping people become less reliant on first responders during a crisis to avoid straining their already thin resources.

The second session is an active shooter training where experts will discuss statistics related to these events, explain the physical and emotional impacts of a violent, stressful event and give advice on what to do to increase chances of survival.

The third session is a Stop the Bleed training, teaching people how to administer first aid to themselves and others as a result of injuries from an attack and to buy crucial minutes for medical assistance to arrive.

“There are so many components to safety in our community. We want to make sure crime is low, and we want to make sure that there are answers to community members when it comes to why things are happening, how they can be safe, to not be a victim, to proactively look for ways to protect ourselves and not just wait for somebody else to do it,” Rose said.

Rose said that she is hoping for a large turnout at these events so that the community can get the necessary information available to save lives in the event of an attack like the ones in Washington, D.C., and Colorado.

She added that she wished these classes weren’t needed but stressed how pleased she has been working with the team of organizers putting this event together and highlighted the dedication they’ve shown to holding these programs.

Rose also connected the classes and the potentially life-saving knowledge to the core values of Judaism in protecting yourself and those around you and saving lives.

“I wish that none of this was necessary. But we have a responsibility in Judaism to save a life, because to save a life is to save the world. You have to do what you can. God wants you to do your part, and this is us taking responsibility, partnering with the community, with the first responders, and educating ourselves so that we can be responsible citizens and possibly save lives,” Rose said.

While the sessions are open to the public, Rose said that community partners have worked to make the sessions more accessible to the Jewish community through making sure no sessions fall on Saturdays, creating gender-separated sessions and holding the programs at the Park Heights JCC.

The second and third sessions are combined-gender classes, but Rose said there will be gender-separated seating available to be culturally inclusive to the Orthodox Jewish community.

Rose said that the reality of the possibility of violence has been a rude awakening for many people in the American Jewish community since Oct. 7.

She added that it came as a shock for many, and people have begun to think about ways they might need to protect themselves and figure out what to do differently to avoid falling victim to violence.

Rose said that while the Jewish community in particular feels anxious and targeted by antisemitism, they aren’t alone in facing rising threats of violence, which is why the training is something they wanted to promote to the entire Baltimore community.

“Although we are aiming for the Jewish community, really any house of worship is at risk. … It’s my hope that any religious organizations, whatever religion they are, participate in this event, because it [promotes] safety for all religions,” Rose said. “I’m hoping that we have participation from the non-Jewish community as well as from other houses of worship.”

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