Synagogues across the U.S. are having congregants train to be volunteer security teams as antisemitic assaults hit record levels and Jewish gathering places face increasing threats.

Driving the news: The front doorways of many synagogues are becoming both a place of welcome and a security checkpoint — a sign of how antisemitism is reshaping Jewish life in America.

• The traditional practice of hiring a guard for High Holy Days services, installing cameras and calling police if something happens, is giving way to more complex, layered security systems.
• "It doesn't mean that we're ninjas ... [or] law enforcement officers, but everybody can have a role to play," said Rusty Rosenthal, a retired FBI agent who leads JShield, the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington's security arm in the D.C. area.

The push for hyper-vigilance comes as physical assaults against Jews in the U.S. hit a 46-year high in 2025.

• Recent high-profile antisemitic episodes include a double stabbing on New York City's Upper West Side and swastikas painted at a fire-damaged temple and Jewish center in California.

By the numbers: More than 7,100 active volunteers have been trained by the Community Security Service (CSS), which now protects more than 500 synagogues and events across the U.S. each week, the nonprofit's CEO Richard Priem tells Axios.

• Priem, a former Israeli paratrooper, said more than 20,000 community members completed training last year with the help of former FBI agents and retired law enforcement officers.
• Meanwhile, Secure Community Network, the official safety and security organization for the North American Jewish community, said its Duty Desk logged a record-high 5,409 threat incidents and suspicious activity reports in 2024, 112% more than two years earlier.
• SCN also says it conducted 1,095 facility security assessments and helped synagogues secure $23.7 million in security funding in 2024.

How it works: Jewish security groups are layering cameras, hardened doors, tighter access rules, trained volunteers and coordination with law enforcement around synagogues.

• JShield calls security "a team sport," while rabbis say the goal is vigilance without losing the welcome and spiritual purpose of Jewish spaces.

CSS was incorporated in 2007 by New York Jewish community members who were worried no one was watching synagogue entrances.

• It stayed small for more than a decade before the 2018 Tree of Life massacre in Pittsburgh pushed donors and security leaders to scale the model, Priem said.
• Priem, who worked in counterterrorism after serving in Israel, said trained congregants bring something commercial guards often cannot: knowledge of who belongs, what feels normal and what looks out of place.

Yes, but: Hardening these spaces takes a psychological toll. Rabbi Nolan Lebovitz, senior rabbi at Valley Beth Shalom in Los Angeles — one of the largest synagogues in North America — tells Axios that clergy are fighting to balance safety with spiritual optimism.

• "Jews, Jewish parents especially, want to feel safe," said Lebovitz, the grandson of four Holocaust survivors. "As clergy and community leaders, we want to assure people that we're using every tool and every resource possible."

State of play: Israel's war in Gaza and declining U.S. support for Israel are part of the backdrop to the security issue.

• Gallup found Americans now sympathize more with Palestinians than Israelis, 41% to 36%.
• Pew found U.S. views of the Israeli people and government have grown more negative since Hamas' Oct. 7 attack in 2023, and the ensuing war.

Between the lines: Protests outside Jewish centers have revealed a double standard. Lebovitz notes that protesters frequently target U.S. synagogues over the war in Gaza, regardless of a congregation's political stance.

• "Nobody in this country would think to protest what's going on in Mexico at a Latino cultural event," Lebovitz said.
• "This trend of increased security will only stop when the American Jewish community feels safe, period."

The Senate voted to confirm Todd Blanche as the next attorney general early Saturday, capping a tumultuous path to office for President Trump's former personal attorney.

The big picture: Blanche's appointment is a win for the Trump administration, especially after a journey that saw some Republicans hold out at multiple stages of the process.

• At one point Trump threatened to keep him as acting attorney general for months, after two GOP senators withheld their votes to advance him from the Senate Judiciary Committee.
• Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) both eventually supported Blanche's advancement after Blanche confirmed that a controversial $1.776 billion fund to pay out perceived victims of political weaponization was dead.

Driving the news: The pre-dawn vote was split 50-49, mostly along party lines.

• Every Democratic member present voted against the Trump nominee, joined by GOP Sens. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Susan Collins (Maine). Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was not present amid a lengthy health-related absence.
• Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) was broadly seen as Democrats' best shot at blocking Blanche's nomination, but he announced Friday that he'd vote in favor of the president's former personal attorney.
• Blanche has been serving in the role in an acting capacity since this spring.

State of play: Blanche will now formally take over the post held by Pam Bondi before she was pushed out.

• With Blanche as acting attorney general, the DOJ has continued its unconventionally close alignment with the White House, renewing attempts to prosecute individuals in line with the president's wishes.

Friction point: While Blanche won over Republican defectors on the controversial fund, he's continued to face sharp criticism from survivors of Jeffrey Epstein — stemming from another controversy that threatened to derail his nomination.

• Tillis had given Blanche another mandate to earn his vote: meeting with Epstein victims. Blanche did so, but multiple survivors publicly panned the meeting as demoralizing and unproductive.

The bottom line: Not much changes with "acting" dropped from Blanche's title. But his confirmation represents the official start of an aggressive new era for the DOJ.

Go deeper: Blanche poised for confirmation vote after he kills Trump's fund

The slightest hint of generative AI usage is fast becoming a kiss of death in creative circles.

Why it matters: It's turning into a purity test that has the potential to blow up careers and derail massive deals almost overnight — and there's no desire for nuance or ability to clear your name.

• Whether you choose disclosure or denial, both can fail to protect you in a climate where using a chatbot as a tool to guide one's thought process is viewed the same as generating creative work wholesale.

Driving the news: Creator Hank Green, who has over 3 million YouTube subscribers, used the phrase "I appreciate the pushback" in a recent video, causing some viewers to suspect that his script was AI generated given the phrase's resemblance to LLMs' response patterns.

• Green said that phrase was a non-scripted ad-lib, but did admit in a lengthy Reddit post to using AI as a research aid "to locate papers and other resources for learning about topics."
• He apologized for "diluting myself in this way and harming the thing that we have all built together" and said that his interactions with LLMs had become "not healthy for me or good for the world."

The big picture: The anti-AI sentiment extends to all corners of the entertainment industry.

• A $2 million book deal after a 14-way auction blew up last week amid rumors that the author, Jerry Falade, had utilized AI in some fashion.
• Falade denied using the tech to The Guardian, saying that it had passed multiple reading stages with agents and editors and "it is difficult to believe that every one of those experienced professionals would have failed to notice" any generative AI usage.
• Deadline reported that the reasoning ultimately came down to money. Any question of AI use might cause the book and any subsequent adaptations to be uncopyrightable.

Between the lines: With the technology still so new and the norms around it so unsettled, it's unclear where the tolerance level for AI use actually lies.

• As Heatmap's Matthew Zeitlin pointed out, Green "was actually experiencing AI-assisted productivity increases" — exactly what AI leaders say is one of the benefits of their products.
• Sometimes the confusion is about what even constitutes AI. Deadline caught flak over the weekend for a headline implying that director Gregg Araki had used it in his new film "I Want Your Sex" — but the tech in question was machine-learning-based audio processing that long predates LLMs.

The other side: Hollywood has drawn clear battle lines against the use of generative AI.

• Kane Parsons, who directed the summer smash hit "Backrooms," told The Australian earlier this summer: "If I could snap my fingers and make generative AI disappear forever, I probably would."
• HBO Max's hit comedy Hacks devoted an entire episode in its final season to rail against the technology. Co-creator Paul Downs told Wired that he believes "trying to take the work and the struggle and the friction out of the creative process makes it not art."
• The Oscars also changed its rules this year to ensure that acting and writing prizes can't be awarded to generative AI creations, though it did say the tech "neither [helps] nor [harms] the chances of achieving a nomination" more broadly.

The bottom line: If someone should decide that your creative work sounds a little too much like Claude — whether you used it or not — good luck figuring your way out of that mess.

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