Fifth wave of threats against community centers and institutions since January is being investigated after headstones were vandalized at another Jewish cemetery

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

Jewish centers and schools around the country are coping with another wave of bomb threats as officials in Philadelphia begin raising money to repair and restore headstones that were vandalized at a Jewish cemetery over the weekend.



Jewish Community Centers and day schools in at least a dozen states received threats, according to the JCC Association of North America. No bombs were found. All 20 buildings – 13 community centers and seven schools – were cleared by Monday afternoon and had resumed normal operations, the association said.

It was the fifth round of bomb threats against Jewish institutions since January, prompting outrage and exasperation among Jewish leaders, as well as calls for an aggressive federal response to put a stop to it.



ADL (@ADL_National) CONFIRMED #bombthreats: #JCC in Asheville, NC & upper school of Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School in Rockville, MD

“The justice department, Homeland Security, the FBI and the White House, alongside Congress and local officials, must speak out and speak out forcefully against this scourge of antisemitism impacting communities across the country,” said David Posner, an official with JCC Association of North America. “Members of our community must see swift and concerted action from federal officials to identify and capture the perpetrator or perpetrators who are trying to instill anxiety and fear in our communities.”

The US attorney general, Jeff Sessions, said on Monday that recent bomb threats made against Jewish groups are “unacceptable” and a “very serious and destructive practice”.



The FBI and the justice department’s civil rights division are investigating the threats.

Meanwhile in Philadelphia, police investigated what they called an “abominable crime” after several hundred headstones were toppled during the weekend at Mount Carmel Cemetery, a Jewish cemetery dating to the late 1800s.

Police, who are conducting a criminal mischief-institutional vandalism investigation, said the vandalism appeared to be targeted at the Jewish community, though they cautioned they had not confirmed the motive. Philadelphia’s Mayor Jim Kenney said authorities were doing everything possible to find those “who desecrated this final resting place”.

Money was being raised to repair and restore the vandalized headstones, while the Anti-Defamation League and a police union are offering a $13,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible.

A man visiting Mount Carmel Cemetery on Sunday called police to report that three of his relatives’ headstones had been knocked over and damaged. The discovery came less than a week after similar vandalism in Missouri, where more than 150 headstones were vandalized, many of them tipped over.

The Missouri incident prompted a response from Donald Trump, who had been criticised by Jewish groups and political opponents for a lack of comment on an increase in threats against Jewish community centers around the US and a White House statement to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day that did not mention Jews or Judaism.

White House defends Trump Holocaust statement that didn't mention Jews Read more

Questions regarding Trump’s attitude to antisemitism and possible antisemitic views among his aides and supporters have persisted since he announced his run for the White House. During the campaign, Trump attracted criticism for tweeting an alleged antisemitic image – he denied any intent to do so but deleted and replaced the image in question – and running ads that critics said employed timeworn antisemitic tropes.

Some observers pointed to the influence of advisers including campaign chairman and now senior White House counsel Steve Bannon, the former head of the “alt-right” Breitbart website who was accused by his ex-wife of making antisemitic remarks, an accusation he denied.

Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, is Jewish. The president’s daughter, Ivanka, converted when she married Kushner.

Well-intentioned volunteers rushed to the Philadelphia cemetery after the damage was discovered on Sunday to begin putting the headstones back up, complicating efforts to tally the damage and perhaps investigate the crime, said Steven Rosenberg, chief marketing officer of the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia.

A day later, Jewish Community Centers in nearby Cherry Hill, New Jersey, and Wilmington, Delaware and a day school in the Philadelphia suburbs were among those getting bomb threats that Rosenberg called a “complete nuisance”.

“There’s plenty of people who are scared,” said Rosenberg, who denounced the hoaxers as “an embarrassment to civilized society”.

Some 200 people were evacuated from a Jewish Community Center in York, Pennsylvania, after a caller told the front desk there was a bomb in the building, said Melissa Plotkin, the York JCC’s director of community engagement and diversity. Police entered the building and cleared it, she said.

Tom Wolf, Pennsylvania’s governor who has long ties to the York center, having served on its board, called the bomb threats and cemetery vandalism reprehensible.

“These acts are cowardly and disturbing,” Wolf told reporters in a conference call on Monday. “We must find those responsible and hold them accountable for these hate crimes.”

Jewish centers and schools in Alabama, Delaware, Florida, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island and Virginia were also threatened, according to the JCC Association of North America.

Since January, the group has tracked a total of 89 incidents in 30 states and Canada.

Paul Goldenberg, director of the Secure Community Network, a nonprofit founded by several national Jewish groups to bolster security in the Jewish community, said Jewish Community Centers and other Jewish institutions have extensive security protocols in place.

After dealing with Monday’s threats, he said, the “Jewish community is back in business”.