Survivor of 2022 Texas synagogue standoff says healing continues after attack

A year after being held hostage in a Texas synagogue, Jeffrey Cohen says he and three other survivors are still recovering from the trauma of the 11-hour standoff between law enforcement and an Islamist gunman.

“I guess the best place to start is to say we are healing, [but] we’re not healed,” said Mr. Cohen, 58, a Lockheed Martin engineer who now serves as president of Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas, and its 140-family membership.

What’s more, some synagogue members “are nervous and uncomfortable” about participating in services or leaving their children for religious education classes, Mr. Cohen said in an interview with The Washington Times.

“People have not been engaging because they are afraid,” he told The Times. “Eventually, we’ll all get over that, maybe not completely over it. We’ll deal with it how we need to deal.”

On Jan. 15, 2022, Malik Fairsal Akram, a 44-year-old British citizen, entered the synagogue with a semiautomatic pistol and took hostage Mr. Cohen and three others, including Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker. One of the hostages was released after 6 hours.

As the attack stretched to 11 hours, Mr. Cytron-Walker threw a chair at the gunman, distracting him and allowing the remaining hostages to escape.

Akram died in a shootout when police stormed the synagogue’s sanctuary.

Mr. Cohen said Mr. Cytron-Walker has since moved to lead a congregation in Winston-Salem, North Carolina — a move that had been planned and announced long before the 2022 attack.

Security training that congregation members had received before the attack enable them “to help keep our attacker calm and to help come up with the time when we would be able to escape,” Mr. Cohen said.

National Jewish leaders say there’s still a need for increased awareness, training and funding to keep congregations secure.

Debra Barton Grant, an associate vice president of the Jewish Federations of North America, is in charge of the organization’s LiveSecure program.

“The biggest shift is in the realization that this isn’t going away,” Ms. Barton Grant told The Times. “It’s not just a fluke, and we really need to be diligent in making sure that not only our spaces are as safe as possible, but that we are trained on how to react if, God forbid, we’re in a situation.

“Our goal is that within the next three years all 146 Jewish Federations and more than 300 network communities, which are our smallest Jewish communities fall under a professionally led community security initiative that meets a level of standards across the board that that is what we are striving towards,” she said.

Jewish Federations President and CEO Eric Fingerhut said Colleyville “very much had a significant impact on the speed with which the security systems are being built” at Jewish facilities.

He also lauded the recent increase to $305 million of the Federal Nonprofit Security Grant Program, saying, “I’m sure that Colleyville had a role to play in that development as well.”

Mr. Fingerhut said even more funds are needed, adding that he believes Congress will increase funding to the suggested amount of $360 million annually.

Meanwhile, Mr. Cohen of Congregation Beth Israel praised the Colleyville community of 22,000 people and its response in the months-long process of cleaning and restoring the synagogue.

“Amazing is too weak a word” to describe the outpouring of support and assistance, he said. “The street that we’re on, it’s kind of interesting because at one end is the Catholic church, at the other end is the Episcopal church, in the middle is the United Methodist church, and there’s a Baptist church behind us.”

He said the Good Shepherd Roman Catholic Church allowed the synagogue’s families to gather during the standoff, where the FBI briefed them. The parish was also a gathering point for national media.

The First United Methodist Church of Colleyville, which the synagogue had used before its own building was opened, again welcomed the Jewish congregation to meet in its event center during the cleanup.

The Rev. Mike Dawson, senior pastor of the Methodist church, said: “There was a place that the city provided for them for a while. But then there were other groups who had signed up to use that,” which prompted the invitation.

Because of the prior relationship, “I could tell the congregation you know, we’ve been roommates before. But, you know, we’ll be roommates again. And so we were happy to do that,” Mr. Dawson said.

Mr. Dawson told The Times that his congregation “took a look at our own security” after the incident and credited Congregation Beth Israel with being “very helpful with recommending certain things.” He said they’ve installed video cameras and otherwise beefed up security.