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After an orientation session 25 candidates will be hand-picked to undergo a training regimen of observational skills, counter-surveillance and physical fitness.

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The training is “much more” than that received by most private security guards, said Mr. Horowitz. Volunteers will need to commit to a minimum of five hours per month.

Toronto is only the pilot project. Once Mr. Horowitz can successfully field a team of 25 volunteers, the program will be rolling out in Jewish communities across the country.

‘It’s a neighbourhood watch … we’re not looking for vigilantes’

A similar U.K. program, the Community Security Trust, boasts 3,000 volunteers protecting more than 300 British synagogues, according to its website. In New York, the non-profit Community Security Service similarly coordinates security programs to respond “to the increasing threat to the American Jewish community.”

New York City is also home to the Brooklyn Shomrim (Hebrew for “guards”), an unarmed volunteer police patrol serving the borough’s Hasidic neighbourhoods and occasionally performing citizen’s arrests. The Community Security Network is “emphatically, categorically” different from groups like the Shomrim, said Mr. Horowitz.

A decorated former soldier with the Israeli Defence Forces, Mr. Horowitz has specialized training in anti-terrorism and still makes annual trips to Israel to volunteer with the Border Police. “It’s about serving the Israeli people, not a political ideology or politician,” he told the Jerusalem Post in December during a jeep patrol.