08/28/2024
Tree of Life Survivor’s Visit Serves as Call to Action
Audrey Glickman, a survivor of the 2018 Tree of Life synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh, watches the 2022 HBO documentary, “A Tree of Life: The Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting,” alongside about 70 attendees Aug. 20 at the Mandel Jewish Community Center of Cleveland in Beachwood. CJN Photo / Abigail Preiszig
ABIGAIL PREISZIG | CJN
Article reprinted with permission from Cleveland Jewish News
Audrey Glickman’s active shooter attack, prevention and preparedness training was essential to her survival during the 2018 Pittsburgh Tree of Life*Or L’Simcha Synagogue shooting.
“We not only had to know how to run, hide, fight, but how to protect kids,” Glickman – who served as a rabbi’s assistant at Congregation Beth Shalom in Pittsburgh, home to an early learning center – told the Cleveland Jewish News. “…And it kicks in right away.”
Glickman and security professionals from the FBI, the Secure Community Network and JFC Security, LLC – the security provider of the Jewish Federation of Cleveland – participated in a panel discussion following a viewing of the 2022 HBO documentary, “A Tree of Life: The Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting,” Aug. 20 at the Mandel Jewish Community Center of Cleveland in Beachwood.
As part of the Jewish Federation of Cleveland’s two-part series, “Keeping Our Jewish Community Safe,” the program had recurring themes including the importance of preparedness, training, community and resilience.
“When you hear from somebody from the community that’s lived and they’ve trained, it’s so much more impactful,” Brad Orsini, senior national security adviser for the Secure Community Network, told the CJN. “We’re using the strength of the community who has been through this to leverage other people to train so they can be safe.”
The No. 1 lesson learned from the Tree of Life shooting was “training has an impact,” Orsini said.
“We learned from survivor after survivor, ‘I lived because I was trained,’” he said during the panel.
Orsini said the Secure Community Network’s goal is to train eight million Jews across North America, and trained 25,000 people in-person across the U.S. in 2024. It wants every training built nationally to be available to the Cleveland Jewish community.
“JFC Security is constantly anticipating our community’s security needs and with the current troubling rise in antisemitism, we are now redoubling our efforts to schedule monthly security training available to all members of the Cleveland Jewish community,” Jim Hartnett, the David P. Miller director of community-wide security of JFC Security, said. “The training saves lives. ... The amount of former law enforcement subject matter experts that are now employed by JFC Security to conduct our community security training is second to none.”
Hartnett said even before the Oct. 7, 2023, surprise attack on Israel by Hamas, antisemitism was on the rise nationally,
“Oct. 7 just took it to another level.”
“The key is to be prepared all the time,” Hartnett said.
Cleveland has one of the most sophisticated security apparatuses in the county, Neil Waxman, chair of the JFC Security committee at the Federation and panel moderator, said. Its four pillars are awareness, target hardening, training the community and relationships with local law enforcement.
The panel put the responsibility of not only training but staying alert and prepared on the audience and community.
“Security and safety are everybody’s problem, everybody’s issue – we’ve got to take ownership of it,” Orsini said. “Report, report, report … we need to report every sign of hate, we need to analyze that, we need to share that information nationally. … Everything’s linked in this threat we’re in now.”
John Breen, an FBI special agent, suggested thinking of hate crimes as a disease and said the community should be proactive in preventing it by reporting suspicious activity and concerning behaviors. These warning signs can be recognized through education and training.
“We will do everything we can to investigate it and prosecute it, but we want to prevent the disease from even happening in the first place,” he said during the panel.
In collaboration with the Secure Community Network, the creators of the 2022 documentary and HBO pay to send survivors of the deadly shooting to travel across the country for two-to-three-day workshops that include showing the documentary, discussing the importance of training and resiliency, and participating in training, Orsini told the CJN.
“It doesn’t just leave people hanging with the film,” Glickman told the CJN. “It brings it down to being a real person in the flesh or a real person they can ask questions after.”
Glickman told the audience she hoped they understood the importance of “knowing what to do, should anything happen” and “how the city of Pittsburgh came around us and supported us and took care of us.”
Breen told the CJN the FBI has a community outreach section and a form on its website if an organization wants to submit a request for free training, adding that organizations can also contact the Cleveland FBI office for direction. For more information or to report suspicious activities, visit bit.ly/4741v7l or call 216-522-1400.
JFC Security also hosts monthly interactive community security training. The next one will be from 7 to 8:30 p.m. Sept. 11 at the Mandel Jewish Community Center at 26001 South Woodland Road in Beachwood. For more information, visit bit.ly/3UMnXxr.
