New report raises the alarm over antisemitic attacks and incidents reaching 43-year high

In Los Angeles, two Orthodox Jewish men were shot on consecutive mornings last month as they left religious services. Federal prosecutors said the suspect had a history of harassing Jews and searched online for a kosher deli before the shootings.

In Tucson, a professor was shot dead in October in what authorities say was an attack motivated in part by the suspect’s belief that the man was Jewish.

Outside Dallas, FBI agents killed a man early last year after he took congregants hostage in a synagogue, shouted conspiracies about Jews wielding political power and threatened to shoot his victims.

A new report suggests the acts are part of a larger trend of record levels of physical violence, harassment and vandalism against Jews that has left no U.S. city or region with a large Jewish population untouched. The Antidefamation League said its tally of physical assaults was the highest it has ever logged.

The civil rights organization, which identifies antisemitic incidents by researching reports from police, victims and news organizations, found that 139 Jews were physically assaulted in 111 incidents last year, including the two men in L.A. who survived and the Arizona State professor who did not.

The vast majority of the assaults last year did not involve deadly weapons. Still, the totals were up from 131 assault victims in 88 incidents in 2021.

“It’s extremely concerning that antisemitic incidents are growing more violent,” Jonathan Greenblatt, the group’s chief executive, said in an interview. “Orthodox Jews, who typically are more easily identifiable than other members of the Jewish community, were disproportionately targeted in 2022, and there was a corresponding increase in incidents that target Jewish spaces…. The idea that we are no longer safe in our synagogues, our shuls, or our communal spaces is simply unacceptable.”

In total, the ADL found 3,697 incidents of antisemitism last year in the U.S., including vandalism and harassment in addition to assaults. The number, the highest the group has counted since it began compiling reports on anti-jewish hatred in 1979, represents a 36% increase from 2021. That year also set a record with 2,717 incidents, while 2020 showed a slight year-toyear dip, probably because of the slowdown of public life due to pandemicrelated closures of houses of worship, businesses and workplaces.

Overall, the ADL said, the pattern over the last years has been one of growing violence, vandalism and rhetoric aimed at Jews. The group logged 2,107 antisemitic incidents in 2019 and

1,879 in 2018. The 2018 numbers included the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history, at the Tree of Life congregation in Pittsburgh in which 11 were killed. In 2019, there was another deadly mass shooting, at the Chabad of Poway in California.

Last year’s incidents took place in every state and the District of Columbia, but five states — all with significant Jewish populations — accounted for more than half of them. New York was first, with 580, followed by California with 518. New Jersey, Florida and Texas rounded out the top five.

More than half — 237 — of those in California were in Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino and Kern counties, a 30% increase regionally from the 182 incidents in 2021 and more than tripling since 2017, the ADL said.

For physical assaults,

New York City — home to the nation’s largest Jewish population — repeatedly was a site of violence.

More than half of last year’s assaults happened in the city and most of those targeted Orthodox Jews, while other types of incidents were more widely spread out, the

ADL said.

Vandalism or harassment accounted for 97% of all incidents, according to the report. That included handing out antisemitic propaganda, a longtime strategy of extremist groups, which drop pamphlets at college campuses, synagogues and individual doorsteps across the country.

White supremacist propaganda distribution more than doubled last year, the ADL said, with 852 incidents. Vandalism, including numerous instances of property damage against synagogues and Jewish schools, was up by over half, with 1,288 instances. And the ADL said swastikas were more prevalent than in previous years, with the symbols used in 792 acts of vandalism.

“We know that there is a serious threat against Jewish people in this country. We know that it is growing each and every year,” Greenblatt said. “And we know that what starts by targeting Jews rarely stops there.”

Jewish communities in the U.S. have long been on alert for violence and harassment, though many over the years have increased security measures and spoken of a greater sense of danger after the mass shootings at California and Pennsylvania congregations and a growing number of less violent events targeting Jews.

“We were closed when the pandemic started, of course, and now we are in this era of places being open again. But

I’ve spoken to a small handful of people that don’t feel safe to come,” said Rabbi Beth Singer of Congregation Emanu-el in San Francisco, an 1,800 member-family Reform tradition synagogue that employs guards and requires visitors to pass through metal detectors.

“Jews tend to walk around with a sort of armor, a way of being vigilant and aware, but at the same time many people recognize that this is not the Middle Ages or the Holocaust and things are generally safe. Still, the trend toward violence and hatred is disturbing,” Singer said.

In Florida, Rabbi Yosef Konikov of the Chabad of South Orlando said his community has been dealing with occasional anti-jewish opposition since he opened the Orthodox synagogue in 2000. But in the last two years, he said, antisemites have become more “brazen,” showing up at his center to loudly harass Jews.

Last month, videos went viral online of members of a hate group shouting through bullhorns at congregants arriving or leaving the synagogue, telling them to “go back to Israel” or screaming “Heil Hitler!”

“Generally speaking, we live in a time when antisemitism is no longer acceptable, and I believe that 99.9% of people are in support of us and good,” Konikov said. “At the same time, I can’t argue with the numbers. It is getting worse.

“People are becoming more brave and brazen to express antisemitism,” he said. “These feelings they may have had but not displayed they now will shout at us. Still, just days after these men came to us there were so many people from the Orlando area who responded by showing up outside again, but this time to show us support.”