Jewish institutions need to be vigilant as this year’s eight-day Passover celebration begins Wednesday evening, multiple analysts say, due to rising antisemitic incidents in the United States and elsewhere.
According to a new report from the Combat Antisemitism Movement’s Antisemitism Research Center, attacks against 12 U.S. synagogues in January and February of this year represent a 71% increase from the seven reported in the same period of 2022.
Along with the synagogue incidents, the group said, Jewish schools and community centers in New Jersey, California and New York have been attacked.
In the New Jersey attack, a man wielding a machete stood outside a Jewish day school and shouted profanities at the students. Other schools received telephone threats of bombings or shootings, the group said.
The report said that sandalism continued in February, noting the desecration of a menorah at a Jewish day school in Los Angeles and broken windows at Purdue University’s Hillel Jewish student center.
Governments need to be involved in providing greater security for Jewish institutions, and more needs to be done to educate people about the roots of antisemitism, said Yoni Michanie, CAM’s research and data manager.
“Antisemitism at its root doesn’t just start and begin with an antisemitic act,” he said in a telephone interview. “There’s a virulent ideology that’s motivating these individuals to target these Jewish institutions.”
Mr. Michanie said resolving the issue “has to involve improving Holocaust education programs around the country. If you look at polls on basic knowledge of the Holocaust or how Jews were targeted during the mid-to-late 1930s and early 1940s, the lack of knowledge in the United States is mindblowing, especially among Gen Z and millennials.”
Yoni Ari, CEO of the Jewish Emergency Preparedness Program, said heightened vigilance must extend beyond the Passover season into the month following.
“We have Passover and [then] a week later we have Holocaust Remembrance Day,” Mr. Ari said. The following month, he said, “we have Israeli Independence Day celebrating 75 years.”
He said his Philadelphia-based organization consults institutions on building “a culture of preparedness” that trains groups how to operate security equipment, create an emergency response team, and deliver training based on “real-life scenarios” of events that have happened elsewhere.
Mr. Michanie said hate attacks are not likely to confine themselves to Jewish institutions.
“Antisemitism really is a symptom of a ruptured society,” he said. “If we’re not carefully treating it, Jews are only the beginning and other minority communities and groups will follow as well. Because when you allow such hateful ideology to become normalized, or access the mainstream, what starts with the Jews doesn’t end with the Jews.”
• Mark A. Kellner can be reached at mkellner@washingtontimes.com.