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A Phil Hall Op-Ed: Houses of worship are very special pieces of real estate. Whether they are grand works of architecture or small storefront settings, they offer a place where like-minded people can gather to give thanks and seek comfort and wisdom from their faith. People who seek to conquer by intimidation and violence always try to destroy houses of worship first as a strategy to impose their will on others.

I live in suburban Connecticut and there is a synagogue in a small neighboring town. The building is a modest structure that is set back from the main road, and you probably wouldn’t notice it if you were driving through town for the first time.

But now, it is difficult not to notice it because there is a security guard in a bright yellow jacket standing outside the synagogue. This building is among several houses of worship along the main road, but it is the only one with a physical security presence outside of its doors.

When the guard was first posted at the synagogue, I was surprised – and not in a good way. After all, this town is in an obscure corner of Connecticut. To be flippant, the most controversial thing to happen in this town would be a disputed umpire’s call in a Little League game. Why would this bucolic dot on the map need a security guard to protect a Jewish house of worship?

The problem, of course, is about the growing waves of hatred aimed at the people who pray within that house of worship. This hatred exploded over the weekend at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia, turning a Hanukkah celebration into the worst massacre of Jews since the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7, 2023. And synagogues have been under attack too often recently, with several high-profile incidents that should never have occurred.

On Dec. 3, Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles hosted a private event for members of the local Korean community about public safety. The synagogue, which dates to the 1850s, is based in today’s Koreatown and relations between the congregants and the surrounding community have been peaceful. I’ll let the writers from The Focus Project detail what happened:

“Protesters blocked the synagogue’s entrances, pounded on the doors, shouted at attendees and attempted to force their way inside. Several infiltrated the event by registering as participants and then staged coordinated disruptions. Eliana Jolkovsky, an American Jew of Korean descent, described how attendees warned the activists that ‘there are children downstairs at the nursery, and that this is a place of worship, but the protesters didn’t care.’ The shouting outside made it impossible for participants to hear the speakers…The protesters arrived masked in Palestinian keffiyehs and shouted slurs, including ‘Zionist pigs’ and ‘baby killers.’ Inside the synagogue, an infiltrator smashed a large glass vase, sending shards across the room.”

But that’s Los Angeles, right? It’s not the obscure little Connecticut town next to where I live. Why should people who live in my area think that could happen here?

Well, similar situations occurred last month at New York City’s Park East Synagogue, which was leased by the organizers of an event to encourage Aliyah, the immigration of Jews to Israel. The evening of this event brought out 200 demonstrators chanting “Globalize the intifada!” and shouting obscenities at the Jewish Americans going into the synagogue. Mercifully, the New York City Police Department was aware of this protest in advance and set up barricades to keep these kooks outside, where one of them told a reporter, “We need to make them scared. We need to make them scared. We need to make them scared.”

As a native New Yorker, I was appalled. That’s not the kind of behavior I ever witnessed in the multicultural city where I grew up and lived for much of my life. But that’s not the type of incident that could occur in the sleepy suburban Connecticut where I live now, right?

In October, an assailant carried out a terrorist attack outside a synagogue in Manchester, England, that began with driving a car into pedestrians and then stabbing people. Two people were killed and three were seriously injured – and this happened on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year. I have family in Manchester, so I was upset that this level of madness is now a part of where they live.

Still, is this my problem? I’m not Jewish and, in concept, I should feel safe and comfortable in thinking, “Hey, this doesn’t have anything to do with me. I belong to a Protestant faith and no one is invading my church or harassing me as I go to worship.”

Not now, at least. As for believing a church won’t be target of the hateful, well I’m afraid that is also wishful thinking. There is a long history of American churches being vandalized and targeted for violence against parishioners. Some of these attacks left scars that never truly healed, such as the 1963 bombing of 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, during a Sunday service that killed four little girls.

The deadliest recent incident of violence against churches happened in September, with a mass shooting and arson attack on a meetinghouse of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Grand Blanc Township, Michigan. That atrocity resulted in four church members being killed and eight injured.

Grand Blanc Township, Michigan? I never heard of the town before this incident, so I had to look that up. I discovered it is as small, peaceful, out-of-the-way place – just like the town next to mine where the synagogue has a security guard protecting the grounds.

But Michigan is hundreds of miles from where I live. And I wonder: “Well, that happened far away from me. Violence against a house of worship can’t happen where I live, can it?”

Or can it?

Phil Hall is editor of Weekly Real Estate News. He can be reached at [email protected].

Photo by Ben_Kerckx / Pixabay