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.

Authorities in Massachusetts are on high alert following a “tragic and senseless” pickup truck attack in New Orleans on New Year’s left at least 10 people dead and dozens injured.

Suspect in New Orleans truck attack that killed 10 identified. FBI says ISIS flag was recovered

“The Massachusetts State Police grieve the tragic and senseless loss of life early this morning in New Orleans,” a spokesperson for the law enforcement agency said in a statement. “We offer our deepest condolences to the grieving families and all those affected by these attacks.”

Authorities say a drive “hell-bent on creating the carnage” rammed a pickup truck into a crowd of New Year’s revelers in New Orleans’ famed French Quarter before being shot to death by police.

The FBI identified the driver as Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, a U.S. citizen from Texas, and said it is working to determine Jabbar’s potential associations and affiliations with terrorist organizations.

Massachusetts State Police confirmed they have been in close contact with federal, state, and local partners to monitor new information and ensure the safety of Bay State communities.

“The Commonwealth Fusion Center, the state’s primary intelligence function, briefed Colonel Noble this morning and will keep Governor Healey and the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security apprised of any developments,” the state police said.

While officials noted that there is no known connection or any direct threat to Massachusetts, state police urged residents to remain vigilant and report anything suspicious or out of the ordinary.

To report suspicious activity or behaviors, call the Massachusetts State Police Fusion Center at 1-888-872-5458 or email fusion@pol.state.ma.us.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates as more information becomes available.

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Those two issues repeatedly have become flash points during contract negotiations between educators and their school committees and have driven teachers to the picket lines.

State law requires most workers to be provided paid parental leave and minimum wage. So why do teachers have to fight for those rights? Here’s what to know.

Since 2021, Massachusetts has guaranteed most workers up to 26 weeks of paid time off, in addition to employer-provided sick days. The leave, funded through a payroll tax and issued by the state, covers about 60 to 80 percent of a person’s salary, although employees can top off their pay with company-provided sick and vacation time.

Massachusetts is one of only a dozen states with paid parental leave. (Federal law requires certain employers to offer 12 weeks of unpaid leave, with employees able to return to their jobs post-leave.)

The parental leave policy was part of a 2018 bill known as the “grand bargain” that also raised the minimum wage to $15 per hour and eliminated time-and-a-half pay on Sundays.

Teachers, and other municipal workers, were specifically excluded from the parental leave part of the bill, and they were already left out of the state’s minimum wage because lawmakers can’t obligate cities and towns to pay parental leave costs without providing them the funds to do so (and they need a super-majority in favor to raise the municipal minimum wage). Municipal employees are still covered by the federal minimum wage, but it is less than half of the state bar, at just $7.25.

Instead of requiring municipalities to pay their share of the payroll taxes and grant their employees paid family leave, the bill gave them the option to opt in. But according to Matt Kitsos, a spokesman for the state’s Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development, not a single municipality has opted into the policy.

The state is barred from creating new costs for municipalities, a provision called the Local Mandate Law. The law was enacted as part of the 1981 tax law Proposition 2½, which limits municipalities’ ability to raise funds. The state is only permitted to impose additional costs on cities and towns if it provides them additional funds. That meant municipalities could not be forced to pay new payroll taxes to fund the benefit. (Communities can vote to accept additional costs — hence the parental leave opt-in.)

A separate piece of state law, written into the state constitution, governs municipal employee benefits and compensation directly. Under the provision, the state can set standards for cities and towns — like the minimum wage — only if the law passes with a two-thirds majority.

Other exempt workers include independent contractors and people working for churches and certain other religious organizations. Employees of the state government do receive paid family leave, as do charter school employees.

Many teachers have relatively generous sick time policies that roll over from year to year, but that accumulation puts younger teachers at a disadvantage and some policies exclude nonbirthing parents from using sick time for parental leave.

“It is just an enormous inequity that our educators, public school educators, who are two-thirds or more women, do not have access to a guaranteed good paid family leave policy,” Max Page, president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, said. “In almost every table where there’s bargaining with the MTA across 400 locals, the issue of paid family leave is a top, top priority.”

According to data from the association, dozens of its local unions have negotiated standalone paid parental leave policies with their districts for an average of about 17 guaranteed days.

Page said his union intends to file legislation to address the issue so educators receive “the equivalent” of the paid leave private-sector and state employees receive.

In recent strikes, union members have won as many as eight weeks of fully paid parental leave.

Page said the union will also file legislation to raise wages for paraprofessionals, although it may not take the form of expanding the state’s minimum wage.

Christopher Huffaker can be reached at christopher.huffaker@globe.com. Follow him @huffakingit.