The Jewish holiday of Passover will be celebrated beginning next week against a background of rising threats that has drawn the attention of the FBI.
Passover, which celebrates the Old Testament deliverance of the Jewish people from Egypt under the leadership of Moses, begins on Monday evening and ends on the evening of Tuesday, April 30.
Coming in the midst of Israel’s war against Hamas and a massive spike in anti-Semitic incidents, FBI Director Christopher Wray said Wednesday that vigilance against terrorism will accompany this year’s celebration.
“We at the bureau remain particularly concerned that lone actors could target large gatherings, high profile events, or symbolic or religious locations for violence -- particularly a concern, of course, as we look to the start of Passover on Monday evening,” Wray said, according to CNN.
Passover, an annual celebration of resilience and survival, is a central liturgical element of Jewish life. It also encapsulates the Jewish diaspora more broadly with a recognition of constant, existential threats to Jewish communities and way of life.https://t.co/QNAXEJcwoz
— U.S. Catholic magazine (@USCatholic) April 17, 2024
“Between Oct. 7 and Jan. 30 of this year, we opened over three times more anti-Jewish hate crime investigations than in the four months before Oct. 7,” Wray said.
Speaking at a meeting of the Secure Community Network, which supports efforts to protect Jewish Americans from violence, Wray said the numbers documenting hate crimes against Jews represent “very real threats to your institutions, to your houses of worship, to your schools and university organizations, and to the individuals in your communities simply for being who you are.”
“We’ve seen -- since Oct. 7 -- a rogues’ gallery of foreign terrorist organizations call for attacks against the United States and our allies,” Wray said.
Global terrorist groups have issued calls “to target Jewish communities both in the United States and Europe,” Wray said, adding that “After the last few days, in particular, the threat posed by Iran itself is very real.”
Wray said the FBI is “urging all of our partners here and around the world to stay vigilant” amid “potential threats that may emerge from Iran or its proxies both overseas and even here in the homeland.”
America’s spike in anti-Semitic incidents was documented by the Anti-Defamation League in its annual audit of anti-Semitic acts in the United States.
The ADL said anti-Semitic incidents increased 140 percent in 2023 to 8,873 incidents in the U.S.
The 2023 total topped 2020, 2021 and 2022 added together and marked the highest year on record since the ADL started tracking anti-Semitic incidents in 1979.
Between Oct. 7, when Hamas slaughtered Israeli civilians triggering the Israeli military action against Hamas, and the end of the year, the ADL recorded 5,204 incidents -- a total that surpassed all of 2022.
This is a national emergency, a record that shames all of us. American Jews are being targeted at school, at work, on the streets, in Jewish institutions and at home. https://t.co/wh8kZac3ww https://t.co/ZIC6NQ4ciR pic.twitter.com/qi4k24oPAm
— Jonathan Greenblatt (@JGreenblattADL) April 16, 2024
Although increases were noted in many places the report cited a 321 percent increase in anti-Semitic incidents on college campuses, most of which took place after Israel responded to the Hamas attack.
Actress Mayim Bialik said the current climate of hate has produced “a fear that I think many of us have experienced, even if you’re not a public person,” according to USA Today.
“I thought about taking my mezuzah down in the weeks and first couple months after Oct. 7, and I don’t think about that anymore, but I do have a pervasive fear that I will be confronted by someone, especially since I am a public face of being Jewish,” the former “Big Bang Theory” star said.
“I never thought that my platform would have to be used to defend the right of Jews to exist,” she said,
“I was raised and educated and even studied the Jewish experience in America, and I knew that there was a tremendous amount of anti-Semitism both covert and overt, but I did not understand the scale. I had no idea of the scale,” she said.
