Fifteen synagogues in the metro region received false bomb threats early Friday – including five houses of worship in upper Manhattan and two in Brooklyn, according to the NYPD and a Jewish security agency.
Threats were emailed to five synagogues on the Upper East and Upper West sides, as well as Hudson Heights, in Manhattan between around 5:15 and 6 a.m. warning of explosives inside the buildings, police said.
Two synagogues in Brooklyn also received the intimidating emails, said Mitch Silber, director of the Community Security Initiative, to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Jewish congregations on Long Island and in Westchester County received the disturbing missives, too, Silber said.
“There are multiple explosives inside the synagogue,” one of the threats said, according to the news agency. “These explosives will go off in a few hours and I will make history. I will make sure you all die.”
Most of the threats were sent through contact forms on the synagogues’ websites – and all were found not to be credible, Silber told the Jewish news agency.
The targeted houses of worship in Manhattan were: the Park East Synagogue on East 68th Street near Third Avenue; the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue on West 68th Street near Central Park West; Congregation Rodeph Sholom on West 83rd Street near Central Park West; Congregation Ohab Zedek on West 95th Street near Columbus Avenue, and the Mount Sinai Jewish Center on Bennett Avenue near Broadway, cops said.
The early-morning hate campaign was intended to force law enforcement to respond to the houses of worship, interrupting their operations, Silber said.
“They’re really just to disrupt, to intimidate,” he said of the threats, adding that an investigation would be launched and that “there should be consequences.”
The threats come as the city has seen an uptick in antisemitic crimes so far this year — with 275 such cases reported between Jan. 1 and Sunday, according to the latest NYPD data available.
The figure marks an approximately 3% increase from the 268 hate crimes targeting Jewish victims that were reported during the same period in 2022, according to the stats.
But reports of antisemitic offenses have swelled in the city, particularly since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war in early October.
Overall, hate crimes in the city are down 6.3% year to date, with 546 reported so far this year compared to 583 for the same time frame in 2022, the data shows.
https://nypost.com/2023/12/01/metro/15-synagogues-in-nyc-area-receive-false-bomb-threats-officials/
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