That’s the issue being debated in Israel in the wake of the last week’s terrorist rampage in Mumbai. Among the targets was the Nariman House, a hostel and religious center run by Chabad Lubavitch, a New York-based ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect that operates hundreds of such facilities around the world.

“It’s clear that we don’t want our Chabad Houses to turn into barricaded forts,” said Rabbi Menachem Brod, official Chabad spokesman in Israel. “The whole idea of Chabad is that we are open and accessible to Jews traveling abroad.”

The concern has left Israeli officials fending off charges that they should do more to protect the buildings, which serve as outposts for ultra-Orthodox Jewish culture. “Of course we care, of course we worry, but there’s not much we can actually do,” said Yigal Palmor, a spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry. “Not only is it not governmental, it’s not even Israeli.”

Official Israeli Government buildings around the world, including embassies, consulates and cultural centres, have been on heightened alert for most of this year following the February assassination in Syria of Imad Mughniyah, a military commander with Hezbollah. Israeli officials denied involvement in the killing, but have braced for a reprisal by Islamic militants — amid steady speculation that the attackers would choose an overseas target tied to Israel.

But it’s unlikely that the alert led to serious security modifications at any of the hundreds of Chabad Houses around the world. “You can’t expect a rabbi and his young wife to defend against terrorists,” said Eli Karmon, a senior researcher at the Institute for Counter-Terrorism, based in Herzliya, Israel. But Karmon pointed out that a security guard or two outside the Nariman House may not have made a difference in the face of what was clearly a well-planned attack.

Perhaps more disturbing than the attack itself to many Israelis is the prospect that a new terrorist template has been laid out — with Chabad Houses and other soft Jewish targets in the cross hairs. It is a possibility that has “staggering ramifications,” said Israeli journalist Ofer Shelah.

“What is clear is that Israeli sites, or at least sites that are connected to Israel, have become targets — be they primary or secondary — for the loose network of global jihad,” Shelah wrote in the Israeli newspaper Maariv.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, in his weekly address to the Cabinet, said his Government “is doing, and will continue to do, everywhere, what needs to be done to protect Jewish institutions insofar as the matter depends on us and is possible”.

Ephraim Halevy, former head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, said the Jewish state is heavily restricted in just what kind of protection it could offer non-governmental institutions like Chabad in other countries. The best Israel can do is coordinate with authorities around the world and make sure the Chabad organisation is kept informed of any potential threats, Halevy said. LATimesal, it’s not even Israeli’