Jewish community centers bolster security

NEW YORK—The JCC Manhattan is accustomed to regular security threats. It always has security guards at the entrance, and visitors must pass through a metal detector. The building on Manhattan’s Upper West Side is surrounded with bollards, the fat round steel posts designed to repel a car bomb attack. After several anti-Semitic attacks took place in major cities in Europe, the New York mayor ordered extra police protection for places like the JCC.

Other Jewish community centers around the country are moving toward similarly high levels of security in response to a rash of bomb threats over the last month. On Monday, 11 JCCs received bomb threats—in Albuquerque, Amherst, Birmingham, Chicago, Cleveland, Houston, Milwaukee, Nashville, St. Paul, Tampa, and Whitefish Bay, Wis. Fortunately none of the bomb threats have foreshadowed actual attacks.

That brings the total number of this year’s bomb threats against JCCs to 69. After bomb threats in January, CNN reported Orlando parents withdrew 50 students from JCC programs there, and its center added bollards like the ones in New York to bolster confidence. The JCC Association of North America said it will host updated security briefings for staff nationwide. For years, Jewish organizations have consulted with a security group called the Secure Community Network to address these kinds of concerns.

Jews are the number one target of hate crimes in the United States by far, according to FBI statistics. In 2014, a Neo-Nazi opened fire outside a JCC in Kansas while spewing anti-Semitic epithets—ironically his bullets killed three Christians.

Yesterday, about 200 graves in a Jewish cemetery in University City, Mo., had their headstones knocked down. Police are investigating.

Jewish columnist Mark Oppenheimer argued for caution in pointing to the root causes of the anti-Semitic incidents. While some have argued President Donald Trump’s divisive campaign emboldened white supremacists, Oppenheimer said data isn’t available yet to confirm that. He pointed to many incidents of anti-Semitism on liberal college campuses like Brown University and Swarthmore College in recent years.

"As bad as 2017 has been for anti-Semitic incidents, 2016 wasn’t great, either,” Oppenheimer wrote. "Nor was 2015, when the Anti-Defamation League reported 90 anti-Semitic incidents on campuses, twice as many as the year before—a slow drip that has continued into this school year.”

On Tuesday, Trump called the threats “horrible and painful and a very sad reminder of the work that still must be done to root out hate and prejudice and evil.” Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter, also tweeted condemnation of the threats—she and her husband Jared Kushner are Jewish.

That was damage control after last week, when an Orthodox Jewish reporter at Trump’s White House press conference asked him to respond to the threats. Trump took the question as a personal attack and said that the question was “repulsive” and that he was “the least anti-Semitic person that you’ve ever seen in your entire life.”

The day after the most recent threats, the JCC Manhattan had three security guards posted at its entrance. A spokeswoman said the center doesn’t share what security measures it takes but insisted the center was going about business as usual. On Tuesday, the building hummed with activity as many students began their winter break and moms parked strollers in rows in the lobby.