How a $300,000 grant aims to help CT residents be safe engaging in their faith

Tension over the war in the Middle East continues to course through parts of Connecticut and local incidents of alleged antisemitism have continued to occur as the conflict heads toward its fifth month.

The Hartford Foundation for Public Giving is helping to fight the dramatic rise of antisemitism across the country with a $300,000 grant to the Jewish Federation.

The money will support an interfaith security initiative in Greater Hartford and will also benefit other faiths.

“With the rise in antisemitism, especially over the last five years, we realized we needed to bolster our capacity to insure that our community institutions and our members were safe. We at the federation do very important work supporting social service needs — not just the Jewish community but the broader community in a variety of ways,” said David Waren, the president and chief executive officer of the Jewish Federation of Greater Hartford

“Unless people feel safe engaging in Jewish life in synagogues and other places. The rest is meaningless,” Waren said.

The funding also will allow the local Jewish community to provide security training for churches, mosques, and other local faith-based organizations.

“We were approached by the federation, and they have had an escalation of threats in various houses of worship,” said Chris Senecal, the senior public policy, and media relations officer at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving. “They came up with this proposal. The grant will also foster dialogue and collaboration between Greater Hartford’s many faith communities.”

The grant is designed to combat hate crimes throughout the state, as is a $3.2 million Nonprofit Security Grant Program announced by U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal in September 2023.

“There are many communities of faith in our region and state and the more resources we have into this the better,” Senecal said. “We are happy to make this contribution to help this effort. We want to do all we can to support our community partners who are doing this work. At the end of the day, we want people to worship as they wish – safely. We are happy to contribute to that effort.”

A report last month by the Anti-Defamation League found a total of 3,291 incidents in the United State between Oct. 7 and Jan. 7, a 361% increase over the year prior. (The date reflect that Oct. 7 was the date of the Hamas-led attack on Israel.) Waren said antisemitism has been up since 2001 overall but has been worse since that day.

The Jewish Federation of Greater Hartford formed the Greater Hartford Secure Community Initiative in 2021 in collaboration with Secure Community Network — a nationwide nonprofit to help set up and sustain Jewish community capacity around the country. The federation built a program for security assessments and training and wants to share that safety net with other faiths.

“We want to increase capacity to respond to some incidents we’ve had locally, and we’ve had some incidents locally. We want to ensure that local law enforcement understands the needs of our community as well. It’s been successful in the Jewish community,” Waren said.

Waren noted, “At the same time, bigotry and violence targeting the Jewish community have risen. We’ve also seen a rise in the targeting of other faith communities — Black churches, mosques, Sikh communities and others.

“We’ve made a decision to begin to share that expertise and those resources more broadly. That’s when we reached out to our friends at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving because we know that they share our concern for the well-being of our community,” he said. “We saw this as an opportunity to bolster the security of other faith-based communities but also to build and expand bridges of bridges and understanding amongst faith communities.

“We want to develop this program to build an interfaith relationships between faith communities. Not only in the skill for the capacity for each faith community to respond if needed, but to stand together in times of need. That’s another element of security that there’s a broader community that’s supporting you when your community is under threat. That’s important in many, many ways.”

The Hartford Foundation for Public Giving awarded $50 million in grants to nonprofits in the area last year, raising its total to $998 million since its founding in 1925.

“We are always grateful to our donors that make this possible,” Senecal said. “We have goals we are trying to reach through our work and being able to provide the resources to our nonprofits is what we are here for.”

Senecal said awarding the funds to the region provides nonprofits to give the basic human needs of residents, increase employment opportunities for residents of color, increase civic and resident engagement, and increase equity and inclusion in the arts sector.

“It’s important work,” Senecal said. “We can’t do this alone. We lean on our partners in the nonprofits. Its work we feel is important and we have challenging goals like dismantling structural racism. These are lofty goals, but we are in it for the long haul. Our board, donors and stakeholders are looking forward to continuing this work.”

Senecal said the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving also wants to increase the number of Hartford residents living in higher opportunity neighborhoods within and outside of Hartford, provide for the basic human needs of residents, increase employment opportunities for residents of color, increase civic and resident engagement, and increase equity and inclusion in the arts sector.

“We are constantly looking to work with more organizations,” Senecal said. “We are recognizing the work of smaller nonprofits that do important work. That’s where residents go for help, and I’m really encouraged by it.”