Jewish Group

Ohr Shalom Synagogue in San Diego, California was vandalized with “Murderer” and “No God” spray painted on the building in January 2025. (Courtesy)

During a prayer service at one Detroit synagogue, an individual threw chairs at congregants, using antisemitic slurs and striking one person in the neck. He threatened to burn the synagogue down.

Another person called a Colorado synagogue and expressed interest in converting to Judaism. Before hanging up, the person asked: "I was just wondering when we can get the starting bonus — you know, the Jewish money."

Another caller left a voicemail for an East Coast synagogue: "Kill all the Jews. It is shower time."

A Kentucky caller sang, "Happy birthday, Adolf Hitler," and followed it with: "Kill all Jews. Kill all kikes."

In Texas, an individual walked into a synagogue and told staff he would "shoot up the place."

These are not aberrations. They are part of a documented, national pattern — 671 antisemitic incidents at or targeting synagogues in 2025 alone.

Let us explain
Of the 6,274 antisemitic incidents recorded across the United States in 2025, 671 targeted synagogues specifically. The overwhelming majority (85%) were harassment, with verbal and written threats comprising the largest single category. But the threats were not only words: nine were physical assaults, two of which involved a deadly weapon.

Synagogues in Colorado, Maryland, Nevada, Washington and Wisconsin had rocks thrown through their glass doors and windows. An Arizona synagogue was set on fire. A Pasadena synagogue received an email celebrating its destruction in the recent wildfires. A bottle of urine was mailed to a congregation in Rochester, N.Y. In New Jersey, someone spray-painted "Terrorists This Way" on the ground outside a synagogue with an arrow pointing at the building — during an anti-Israel protest.

The threats included death threats, bomb threats and calls invoking the Holocaust. "If and when I join a terrorist group, I'll remember your place... I will find you, Jew," a caller told one California congregation. "You dirty f--king Jew. Die, you dirty f--king Jew," said another to a California shul's voicemail. A Virginia synagogue received a letter: "It's unfortunate that you weren't born in Germany, 1926." A North Dakota caller declared: "I'm German, and I f--king hate Jewish people. So, every f--king Jewish person I see in there I'm going to f--king kill them, and then I'm going to hit them with an AK-47."

Online worship was not safe either. Virtual funerals and synagogue services in Connecticut and Portland, Ore. were interrupted by antisemitic and pornographic content. Children attending Hebrew school at a New Jersey synagogue were called "terrorists." A Wisconsin congregant entering services for Rosh Hashanah heard someone shout "F--k Israel" from a passing car. A person outside a Connecticut synagogue told a Jewish individual: "I used to beat your dirty kind in New York."

Why it matters
A synagogue is, by design, a place of openness. A place people look to and rely on when they are seeking community, grieving, or searching for connection and meaning. The fact that the Jewish value of welcoming the stranger is now being exploited — by callers feigning interest in conversion, by protesters marking entrances as enemy territory, by individuals who know exactly when and where Jewish people will gather — reflects how completely valid American Jewish fears of hate directed their way are.

The breadth of what was recorded in 2025 — from rural voicemails to big-city vandalism, from online services disrupted mid-prayer to children called terrorists in Hebrew school — tells us that no size of community, no region of the country and no format of worship is insulated. The deliberate targeting of sacred spaces is designed not merely to damage property but to make Jews feel that nowhere is safe.

Six hundred seventy-one incidents in one year. That is nearly two every single day.

ADL is fighting back on every front: working with law enforcement through our Threat Monitoring Unit to help disrupt attacks before they happen, advocating for federal safe worship zone legislation, and securing tens of millions in security funding for vulnerable institutions. The threats are real — and so is our resolve to meet them.

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The Totenkopf is a "knee-slapper" of a joke. Anti-Semitism is only wrong when the other side does it.