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In just 24 hours over this past weekend, 199 bogus bomb and swatting threats were delivered from one coast to the other, according to the Secure Community Network, a nonprofit that monitors antisemitic threats and coordinates security for Jewish institutions nationwide.
It was shortly before 10 a.m. Sunday, Dec. 17, when Barnert Temple on southbound Route 208 in Franklin Lakes received an emailed bomb threat.
Fifteen minutes earlier, a house of worship in Hopewell Township got a similar threat, police there said. The email said there were "multiple explosives" in the building set to detonate in a few hours.
That none of the mostly emailed threats across the country were deemed credible wasn’t the point.
The purpose of the campaign – which has intensified following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel and the ongoing war between the two – is aimed at disrupting activities by sending police to the various Jewish locations, authorities say.
Each hoax “puts innocent people at risk," FBI Public Affairs Specialist Amy Thoreson said.
Franklin Lakes police evacuated the synagogue in their town of 100 or so children and staff members on Sunday, said Capt. Mark McCombs, the officer in charge of the department.
Wyckoff and Oakland police and a Bergen County Sheriff’s Department K-9 Unit assisted, McCombs said.
A thorough inspection inside and outside the temple found nothing potentially dangerous, he said.
Police in Hopewell Township similarly evacuated an unidentified house of worship after a spiritual leader got the threat there. Pennington police and firefighters assisted.
Meanwhile, in New York, bomb threats were reportedly called in to 15 synagogies, including five in Manhattan, two in Westchester County, one on Long Island and two in Brooklyn.
“These explosives will go off in a few hours and I will make history,” one of the emailed threats reportedly says. “I will make sure you all die.”
Since the war in Gaza began, antisemitic incidents across the United States had more than quadrupled over the same time period in 2022, the Anti-Defamation League reported.
Hundreds of threats have been received nationwide since the summer, including during the high holidays.
Surveys have shown conclusively that bomb threats to synagogues “create the kind of fear that would keep Jews away from their own communities," said Rabbi David Levy, the regional director of the New Jersey chapter of the American Jewish Committee.
The SCN's Masters took it further.
“It’s critical to recognize that these are not victimless crimes or innocent pranks: they can have real – and even deadly – consequences," he said.
“Unfortunately, there is reason to believe that this nationwide trend will continue in the foreseeable future,” the Jewish Federation of Northern New Jersey wrote in an email to its members over the weekend.
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