The shootings at a Jewish school in France have schools and houses of worship in New Jersey looking again at their own security precautions, already at a heightened level for years because of threats against Jewish communities worldwide.

Police departments said they are increasing their presence around Jewish institutions, while administrators said the Toulouse, France, attack has them reviewing their own emergency planning.

Administrators at Solomon Schechter Day School in Marlboro said they were reviewing plans and preparing for one of the school’s regularly scheduled emergency drills.

“The Toulouse attack in France is a reminder that the Jewish community faces threats anywhere in the world. As an Israeli, I am too familiar with living under the threat of attack at anytime,” Yoti Yarhi, head of school at the Schechter academy, said in an emailed response. ” However, I will not allow that fear to overtake the life of our students and the Jewish community. We must continue to live normally; we must not allow the terrorists in the world to change our daily routines, for if we do, then they have won.”

“It’s always a delicate balance. We don’t want to be a fortress” and diminish the atmosphere for learning, said Linda Glickstein, director of admissions and marketing at Solomon Schechter.

That’s the advice to community groups from Paul Goldenberg, the national executive director of homeland security initiatives for the Jewish Federations of North America.

“Remain vigilant, test your plan, but stay open for business,” Goldenberg said.

“We’ve been extremely vigilant for the last few months,” said Goldenberg, who stays in close touch with state and federal agencies. “There’s been an uptick in extremely violent acts against the Jewish community” including criminal acts in New York and vandalism and attempted firebombings in Bergen County, he noted.

Middle East political tensions and the threat of wider military conflict carry with them the risk of inflaming committed individuals “to act on those aspirations,” Goldenberg said. “But we’re going to continue to do what we do every day, go to school, go to work, go to worship.”

In September 2011 the Jewish Federation of Ocean County hosted an emergency planning and security seminar for school personnel, said Danny Goldberg, the federation’s executive director.

“Every synagogue has a school, so we ran a training program for those teachers and administrators,” Goldberg said. The program was not in response to any particular threats but “the feeling was that it can’t hurt, pardon the expression,” he said.

Soon after news of the Toulouse attack, Toms River Police Chief Michael Mastronardy reached out to the community to say officers would step up their patrols. Lakewood Police Chief Robert Lawson said his department changed its routines, too.

“We are taking special precautions in Lakewood,” said Lawson, who would not talk in any detail about his plans. “We take any events, whether they take place in the U.S. or internationally, very seriously.”

Lawson and others said there have been no indication of a changed threat level this week, according to the state and federal law enforcement and security agencies they communicate with. The Jewish community uses the Secure Community Network as a central coordinating and communication hub with state and national law enforcement.

(Source: APP)