A new student handbook (9th edition), Stay Safe in Israel, outlines security precautions for students and tourists traveling to the Holy Land, especially given the heightened danger due to the war. The author, Frank Storch, is an award-winning security and safety expert from Baltimore with over 50 years of experience, and the founder of the Chesed Fund and Project Ezra Baltimore, non-profit organizations that specialize in protecting the Jewish community.
In the U.S., Storch assists synagogues, schools, camps, and hospitality facilities to identify threats as quickly as possible and upgrade their security. “It only takes a few seconds between life and death,” he told The Jewish Press. He is currently in Israel for speaking engagements at yeshivas and seminaries, and his focus is on helping students who are coming to Israel for their gap year. His wife, Danielle, elaborated, “There’s nobody who’s really addressing seminary and yeshiva students… He’s really emphasizing a lot of safety techniques – not to scare them, but to inform and empower them.”
The handbook dispenses advice for personal safety, safety in crowds, hiking, going out for Shabbos, and precautions to take when traveling by taxi and public transportation. There are also lists of security and national disaster websites and apps and emergency phone numbers.
Stay Safe in Israel is endorsed by the Secure Community Network (SCN), a North American non-profit organization that connects the Jewish community with federal law enforcement, and Agudath Israel and United Hatzalah.
Storch has implemented risk management practices at the Western Wall, Ben Gurion Airport, and the Malha Mall in Jerusalem. He was honored with the Maccabiah Award in 1997 for his devotion to protecting Israeli citizens, a commitment that is unwavering.
In the past nine years, Storch has printed 100,000 emergency cards with life-saving information, such as how the phone number for United Hatzalah in Israel is 1221, something many people traveling to Israel are unaware of. Danielle Storch told us how her husband randomly approached an English-speaking woman in Israel and asked, “Do you have my card?,” to which she replied, “That card saved my baby!” Danielle described how the woman had just made aliyah and was in panic when she saw her baby turning blue, and then remembered – the man with the red card! – and called United Hatzalah.
In other incidents, a seminary student witnessed a passenger on the train having a seizure and pulled out the red card Storch had handed her; a man from London who was convinced he didn’t need the card reluctantly took it, and it saved a yeshiva student’s life that night.
Storch noticed that there aren’t signs around Israel demonstrating the Heimlich maneuver like there are in the United States, so he made up 1,000 signs and is distributing them to yeshivas, seminaries, and restaurants. He said these posters were created 15 years ago and have saved three lives in Baltimore that he knows of.
He also created a bomb shelter checklist, which reminds people not to forget their glasses or medication – “things that are easy to forget in an emergency,” he says.
When the Israel-Hamas war began, Danielle described how her husband, who has always loved flashlights, started sending them to IDF soldiers. She relayed how, as soldiers were coming out of a tunnel in Lebanon, they mounted the flashlights onto the clips of their guns and spotted three terrorists, whom they immediately eliminated. While IDF soldiers were clearing out a house in Khan Yunis, one of them put a flashlight on the tip of his rifle and spotted tripwire and a booby trap that could have killed them through a bullet hole in the door, so he warned the soldiers not to enter.
Storch and his wife met with the assistant commander of that mission who “gave my husband the biggest hug and said, ‘I owe my life to you. There are not even words that I can say to thank you for what you did for me,’” she related.
“Saving lives has been our mission for decades,” Storch emphasized. For more information, visit www.chesedfund.com.
