Locked gates, open wounds - The Jewish Standard

There was a time — not so long ago — when a school was simply a school.

You walked up to the front door, turned the handle, and walked in. The playgrounds were open. The athletic fields were shared. The idea that a visitor would be stopped, screened, and tagged like a controlled asset would have seemed not just unnecessary, but un-American.

That was the America I grew up in.

And then there was the America I encountered last week.

I visited two Bergen County yeshivas for Yom HaZikaron. What I saw shook me. At Yeshivat Frisch, a 10-foot-high wrought-iron fence surrounds the campus. Entry requires passing through a guard booth, presenting identification, and being checked against an approved list. Even after being admitted through the gate, the building itself remains sealed — accessible only through an intercom, another verification, and the issuance of a visitor’s badge.

At Yeshivat Noam, the experience was nearly identical. A guard in the parking lot required my driver’s license, and kept it at the gate, before I could proceed. Access was controlled, monitored, and documented. I was met outside by a guard.

This is not a critique of the schools. Quite the opposite. These institutions are doing exactly what they must do to protect their students. They would be negligent if they did otherwise.

That is precisely the problem.

We have reached a point in American life where Jewish schools must resemble fortified compounds — where children begin their day not by running through open doors, but by passing through layers of security designed to keep danger out.

For many years, this has been the reality of Jewish life in Europe. Synagogues are guarded by men with automatic weapons. Schools are discreet. Names are sometimes withheld from public view. The need for protection is understood as a tragic necessity in a Europe resurgent in anti-Semitism.

But America was different. Or so we believed.

America was the exception — the place where Jewish life could be lived openly, confidently, without fear. The place where security was not a daily ritual but an afterthought, if it was considered at all.

What has changed is not merely architecture. It is atmosphere.

The fences, the guards, the intercoms — they are physical manifestations of something deeper: a growing recognition that antisemitic violence is no longer distant, no longer theoretical, and no longer rare. From Pittsburgh to Poway to Jersey City, the warnings have been written in blood. More recently, the climate of hostility — on campuses, in public discourse, and increasingly in the streets — has made clear that the threat environment is evolving, not receding.

And so we adapt.

We harden our institutions. We train our staff. We monitor our perimeters. We install emergency buttons in classrooms. We do what responsible communities must do when confronted with real danger.

But adaptation comes at a cost.

There is something quietly tragic about a generation of children who will never know what it felt like to attend a school without barriers. Children who will grow up assuming that security checkpoints are as normal as classrooms. There is something unsettling about the loss of casual openness, the easy trust that once defined American civic life.

We tell ourselves — and rightly so — that this is the price of safety. That vigilance is the new normal. That we cannot afford nostalgia when lives are at stake.

All of that is true. But it is also true that something has been lost.

Not just convenience. Not just aesthetics. Something more foundational: the sense that America is a place where doors can remain open without inviting danger. The belief that Jewish institutions can exist without needing to look over their shoulders.

The question is not whether these measures are justified. They are.

The question is what it means that they are necessary.

What does it say about the trajectory of our society when schools must be fortified to function? What does it say about the culture around us when the burden of security falls so heavily — and so visibly — on one community?

And perhaps most importantly: where does this lead?

Because fences have a way of becoming permanent. What begins as a response to a threat can, over time, redefine expectations. Today’s precaution can become tomorrow’s baseline.

We should not accept that lightly.

We should support these schools, fund their security, and thank those who stand guard. But we should also insist — quietly, persistently — that this is not the America we are prepared to settle for.

An America where children must be protected like this is an America that has work to do.

The gates may be locked.

But the questions they raise should remain very much open.

Stephen M. Flatow of Long Branch and Jerusalem, formerly of West Orange, is an attorney and the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995. He is author of A Father’s Story: My Fight for Justice Against Iranian Terror (now available in an expanded paperback edition on Amazon) and is the president of the Religious Zionists of America-Mizrachi.)

Opinion

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