Important Takeaways:

• A Time Of High Anxiety For American Jews: Jewish Institutions Receive 199 Threats In Just 24 Hrs, Causing Evacuations
• Hundreds of synagogues and Jewish institutions across the United States received bomb threats by email this weekend, in a substantial acceleration of a months-long spree of hoax threats.
• The Secure Community Network, which coordinates security for Jewish institutions nationwide, said early Sunday that it had tracked 199 threats over the past 24 hours, with nearly 100 in California and 62 in Arizona. Synagogues in at least 17 states plus Washington, D.C., were affected, according to local media reports.
• None of the threats were deemed credible after local investigations. But some of them caused significant disruption: A Boulder, Colorado, synagogue evacuated its Shabbat morning services on Saturday, for example, while a congregation in western Massachusetts canceled its Sunday religious school.
• In Alabama, the state’s only Jewish lawmaker, Philip Ensler, posted a video to social media showing the moment that the Torah reading at his synagogue was interrupted and everyone in attendance was ushered outside.
• “This is exhausting,” he tweeted. “I pray for the day that we can worship and live in peace.”
• The surge in threats comes at a time of high anxiety for American Jews amid a spike in reports of anti-Semitic incidents amid the Israel-Hamas war. It also follows multiple arrests of people who have been charged with sending bomb threats targeting Jewish and other institutions, including a minor in California last week and a man in Peru in September.

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