Jewish communities in Mass. concerned as antisemitic hate crimes increase for third straight year – The Boston Globe

Physical violence against Jews in Massachusetts was rare, but vandalism, destruction, or intimidation accounted for 88 percent of the antisemitic bias incidents reported in 2023. About 72 percent took place in the eastern counties of Middlesex, Suffolk, and Norfolk, where the Jewish population is more concentrated.

“We don’t have massive organized violence against Jews, but there’s the prospect of it,” said Robert Leikind, regional director of the New England chapter of the American Jewish Committee. “When I go to synagogue, the doors are locked now.”

The state report tallies all types of hate crimes in the state, offenses in which bias, including bigotry toward religion, race, or gender, could be charged as a motivation for the crime. The most common target was the state’s Black population, with 149 incidences of bias, though the number decreased by almost 6 percent compared with the year before.

Another group increasingly targeted was the trans community. Antitransgender incidents increased from 14 in 2022 to 36 in 2023, a 157 percent increase.

The report “highlights a concerning increase in bias-motivated incidents, underscoring the need for continued vigilance and action,” said Elaine Driscoll, a spokesperson for the state’s Executive Office of Public Safety and Security. The 2023 data wasn’t released by the state until the end of December.

The data in the report comes from voluntary reporting from local police departments and campus police, as well as the Massachusetts Environmental Police. Boston, Somerville, Cambridge, Medford, Arlington, Newton, and Brookline all reported more than 10 hate crime incidents.

Overall, state law enforcement identified 557 hate crime reports, the most in nine years of reporting, some of which involved multiple incidents of bias. An example, Driscoll said, could be a single report that documented both an antireligion and an antirace bias.

Efforts to counter hate crimes in 2024 included $16.4 million in state and federal grant money for security at nonprofits, health care providers, and cultural centers that might be targeted. Additional money to protect nonprofits is expected in the spring.

Though hate crimes reported against Arabs, many of whom are Muslim, were not as common as those targeting Jews, they too became more common in 2023, nearly tripling to 20 reported incidents. For Muslims overall, the state report identified a decrease in hate crimes in 2023.

Massachusetts is home to about 318,000 Jews, according to the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, a nonprofit focused on boosting ties between those two countries. Massachusetts has the nation’s 10th largest Muslim population, with more than 131,000, according to the World Population Review.

Barbara Dougan, legal director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations-Massachusetts, an antidiscrimination organization based in Arlington, said she suspected that the state report undercounted the number of incidents directed at Muslims. She noted her organization conducted a 2023 study of discrimination against Muslims, a population that includes many Arabs, and found a 40 percent increase in incidents of hate crimes compared with 2022.

“The majority of our clients are immigrants,” she said. “There is a hesitance to come forward if you’re not sure how one even does that, or if you’re not sure what kind of reception you’re going to get.”

She also had concerns that police departments aren’t always filing hate crime charges. She noted that 314 police agencies identified no bias incidents, and 41didn’t respond to the survey at all.

Last year, the Anti-Defamation League reported a 40-year high in antisemitic incidents in 2023 in New England. The organization identified 623 incidents of assault, harassment, and vandalism in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Maine, and Vermont, a 205 percent increase over 2022. About 44 percent of those incidents happened after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, the organization reported.

The local increase in antisemitism mirrors national trends. The Anti-Defamation League identified a 140 percent increase in antisemitic activity nationally in 2023 over the prior year.

“There’s a great fear anecdotally, many more experiences of being harassed just on the street for being Jewish,” said Peggy Shukur, deputy regional director of the Anti-Defamation League’s New England office. “This is something that’s happening and it is spreading fear.”

Advocates for both Jewish and Muslim populations agreed the Hamas attack, and the subsequent war in Gaza, caused both groups to experience more discrimination, an increase likely not fully captured in the 2023 data.

“We’ve been watching this trend gathering momentum for a long time,” Leikind said. “There’s no question that the events of Oct. 7, 2023, turbocharged what was already happening.”

Jason Laughlin can be reached at jason.laughlin@globe.com. Follow him @jasmlaughlin.