NEW YORK (VINnews) — The American Jewish community is now spending more than $1 billion a year to secure synagogues, Jewish schools, community centers, summer camps and other communal institutions, according to new data released by the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA).
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The organization estimates that annual Jewish communal security spending has reached approximately $1.015 billion, a 33% increase from its previous estimate of $765 million in 2024. The new figure covers more than 4,500 Jewish institutions across North America and works out to an average of roughly $225,000 per institution each year.
The estimate does not include privately owned Jewish businesses such as kosher restaurants, kosher grocery stores, Judaica shops and Jewish bookstores.
The largest portion of the spending goes toward security personnel, including guards and security directors. Another approximately $150 million a year is spent on security technology and physical upgrades, including cameras, access-control systems, reinforced buildings and the installation and maintenance of other protective measures.
JFNA President and CEO Eric Fingerhut said the dramatic increase in spending is a measure of how much more dangerous Jewish communal life has become.
“Every dollar our community spends on guards and cameras is a dollar not spent on Jewish education, on caring for our elderly, on taking care of those in need,” Fingerhut said.
The scale of the spending is striking: JFNA estimates that $1.015 billion could instead fund Jewish day-school education for approximately 44,000 children, cover summer camp for Jewish children nationwide, or pay for Birthright Israel trips for an entire decade.
The figure also fulfills, almost eight years later, a warning made by Malcolm Hoenlein, then executive vice president of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, in the aftermath of the 2018 massacre at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue. Hoenlein said at the time that adequately securing Jewish institutions across the United States could ultimately cost hundreds of millions of dollars and potentially as much as $1 billion.
The increase in security spending comes amid persistent levels of antisemitic crime and threats. According to the latest FBI data, anti-Jewish hate crimes accounted for 64% of all religiously motivated hate crimes recorded in the United States in 2025, even though Jews make up only about 2% of the U.S. population. The FBI data cited by JFNA recorded 1,528 anti-Jewish hate-crime incidents in 2025, making Jews the most targeted religious group in the country. JFNA described 2025 as the third-worst year on record for American Jews in terms of reported antisemitic hate crimes.
New York City provides another illustration of the trend. NYPD statistics show that confirmed hate crimes across the city increased 15.8% during the first eight months of 2026, to 425 incidents. Confirmed anti-Jewish hate crimes rose 8%, to 229 incidents, accounting for 53.9% of all confirmed hate crimes despite Jewish New Yorkers comprising about 10% of the city’s population.
The increase in antisemitic incidents has occurred even as overall crime in New York has declined in several major categories. The NYPD reported historically low levels of shootings and murders during the summer, underscoring the disproportionate nature of the rise in hate crimes.
Jewish organizations are now using the new spending figures to press Congress for significantly greater federal assistance. The central target is the Nonprofit Security Grant Program (NSGP), administered by the Department of Homeland Security’s FEMA. The program provides grants to nonprofit organizations considered vulnerable to terrorist or extremist attacks, helping pay for measures such as cameras, reinforced entrances, access-control systems and other physical and cybersecurity improvements.
Congress approved $300 million for the NSGP for fiscal year 2026, up from $274.5 million the previous year. Jewish organizations argue, however, that the amount remains far below the needs of vulnerable institutions.
In May, Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen of Nevada and Republican Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma introduced the bipartisan Jewish American Security Act, which would authorize $1 billion annually for the NSGP and expand federal efforts to combat antisemitism. A companion bill was subsequently introduced in the House by Reps. Dan Goldman and Mike Lawler.
JFNA says fully funding the program at $1 billion would help close the growing gap between what Jewish institutions are being forced to spend themselves and the federal assistance available to them.
For American Jewish institutions, the numbers represent more than an accounting exercise: they reflect the increasingly substantial cost of maintaining ordinary communal and religious life in an environment where security has become an unavoidable part of the budget.