Citing a growing threat to Jewish institutions, advocates for Jewish groups are asking Congress to increase funding for a federal security grant program that almost exclusively benefits Jewish charities.
The effort comes amid signals that the federal program, which has drawn criticism from the editorial pages of this newspaper, has now achieved a new level of acceptance in Washington.
“We are pointing to explicit threats that are on record,” said Nathan Diament, chairman of the Orthodox Union Advocacy Center. Diament says that his group is pushing Congress to bump the size of the program to $25 million in 2017, which would be the largest it has ever been.