Jews Prepare For High Holidays As White Supremacist Incidents Soar In Mass.

For Jews across the commonwealth, the new year begins next week in a traditional celebration of joy and atonement, but also with a growing sense of foreboding.

Incidents of white supremacists distributing fliers, posters and literature around Massachusetts have increased dramatically this year, according to data collected by the Anti-Defamation League. In 2018, ADL recorded 35 such incidents in the state; this year so far, there have been 60 incidents, and the total for the year will almost certainly wind up being more than double last year's total.

“We've been tracking anti-Semitic incidents for 40 years, and the numbers that we've seen in the last couple of years are at historic highs,” said Robert Trestan, director of the ADL in Boston. “There are people within the state who have become activated and are mobilized and are not just talking about hatred amongst their friends or online, but they're actually getting up, leaving their houses and doing something about it.”

While the ADL data covers propaganda activities like distributing racist fliers, it does not include other troubling incidents in the state, such as the arson attempts at three orthodox Jewish centers in Arlington and Needham in May. Police in Hull announced Monday that they charged several teens with vandalism for spray painting swastikas, “Hitler 2020” and other anti-Semitic messages on a historic site there. In March, 59 headstones were defaced in a Jewish cemetery in Fall River.

“We need to pay very close attention because as people become more activated to take action on their hatred, whether it's Jews or other groups, the danger really is an escalation in violence,” Trestan said.

Trestan and other Jewish leaders note that Jews are not the only targets of white supremacist attacks; Muslims, Hispanics and other minorities have also been victims of an increasing wave of hate incidents. But Mark Potok, a former senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center, said the rising radical right movement in America “is pretty much completely dominated by anti-Semitism.”

And Potok says this is not just a bunch of irresponsible youth acting out and testing taboos.

“The idea that these are just unpleasant teenagers who have somehow been driven to extremism by algorithms on the Internet is frankly ridiculous,” he said. “It absolutely minimizes the reality of what's happening.”

The reality, he said, is that “we are living through an enormous historic backlash against major changes in the world around us. [The United States is] about to hit the highest level, the highest percentage, of foreign-born population in this country since the 1920s,” Potok said, and whites will no longer be a majority in the U.S. in a couple decades. That is “driving a kind of rage out there — a feeling of loss of identity,” he said.

And for Jews, that rage is changing the way they worship.

Next week’s Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur celebrations marking the Jewish New Year will be the first since the October 2018 massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, where a gunman killed 11 people. Since then, security efforts at synagogues, Jewish schools and other Jewish gathering places have increased dramatically.

Jeremy Yamin, director of security and operations for Combined Jewish Philanthropies in Boston, said his organization has provided security training to over 2,000 people this year. That is an increase of “at least 30 to 40 percent this calendar year over prior years,” he said.

But synagogue security is not about just putting an armed guard and metal detectors at every door. “I can secure a synagogue, make it like a TSA checkpoint,” Yamin said. “Everybody has to empty their pockets and go through metal detectors and all bags are X-rayed. That's not the goal.” That kind of security “would also be scaring off and turning away our flock. So we have to strike the right kind of balance,” he said.

Some of the security is simply training greeters and ushers to engage newcomers in a welcoming conversation that can also serve as a screening for red flags that might suggest the person is intending to do harm.

“Security done poorly is awkward and artificial and off-putting,” Yamin said. “Security when it's done well is part of your environmental risk management. It's part of your welcoming. And it can be very friendly. And so that's what we try and do.”

But Yamin adds that synagogues have to recognize they can no longer just have unlocked, unattended doors. "That's really unfortunate. And that is a sea change. There are many institutions that really want to have the doors open and unlocked but can't staff them all the time and they want to welcome people in."

Aaron Agulnek of the Jewish Community Relations Council said he hopes concerns about security don't keep anybody from worshiping during this New Year's season. “These wounds are fresh and the anxiety is real, and at a time of the High Holidays, when Jews traditionally come together in great numbers, this is the time where a lot of people might be experiencing these threats for the first time.”

But he believes worshipers will not be deterred. “We're all coming together. The doors will be open. People will be coming to pray. And we're not going to let threats of violence get in the way of our sacred celebrations.”