In the eight years since a gunman killed 11 people at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh — the deadliest antisemitic attack in American history — synagogues and other Jewish institutions across the country have gone to great lengths to fortify themselves.
They have hired security guards, installed metal detectors, reinforced locks, bought cameras and established checkpoints. They have logged onto security briefings and participated in training sessions for clergy members specifically focused on preparing for active shooter events.
Outside their walls, however, antisemitic violence and rhetoric have only increased, with tensions ratcheting up further in recent weeks, in the wake of Israel and America’s new war in Iran. Last weekend, two men were beaten outside a restaurant in San Jose, Calif., in an attack police are investigating as a possible hate crime. Three synagogues in Toronto have been sprayed with gunfire in the last several weeks.
And on Thursday, a driver rammed a truck into a large synagogue outside Detroit, dying after an exchange of gunfire with security guards.
The attack was “a targeted act of violence against the Jewish community,” Jennifer Runyan, the special agent in charge of the F.B.I. office in Detroit, said at a news conference on Thursday afternoon.
The suspect was identified by the Department of Homeland Security as Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, a 41-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in Lebanon. He drove through the doors of the building and down a hall, Sheriff Michael Bouchard of Oakland County, Mich., said at a news conference. A fire started inside the building, and the sheriff said that video showed the attacker “traveling with purpose” through the hallway.
Security measures in Michigan very likely prevented a more deadly outcome, some noted. But the intense escalation of violence has left many people feeling scared, angry and defeated. And some are asking what more they could possibly do.
“I think the Jewish community had just about had it,” Rabbi Steven Abraham, who leads Beth El Synagogue, a Conservative congregation in Omaha, Neb., said on Thursday afternoon. “There’s a level of PTSD with the heightened awareness.”
“We are synagogues — we are houses of worship,” he said. “We are not Fort Knox.”
Jewish institutions now spend $765 million annually on security, according to an estimate last year by the Jewish Federations of North America. A typical Jewish organization spends 14 percent of its annual budget on security, the organization estimates.
The president and chief executive of the Jewish Federations, Eric Fingerhut, called this a “Jewish tax” in a recent speech calling for increased federal funding for security, among other measures.
A recent survey by the American Jewish Committee, a nonprofit, found that 91 percent of American Jews say they feel less safe in the United States in the wake of high-profile attacks last year, including the arson attack at the home of Pennsylvania’s governor, Josh Shapiro, and the killing of two Israeli Embassy aides last spring outside a Jewish museum in Washington. More than half said that they had changed their behavior out of fear.
Rabbi Paul Kerbel, leader of a synagogue in Union County, N.J., remembered traveling to Europe 20 years ago and having to show his passport and pass armed guards to enter synagogues. Now, it’s every synagogue in America that has security, he said.
The crisis has awakened more Jews in recent years to examine what being Jewish means to them, he said, and reflect on what they can do to help their people.
His own community has received bomb threats in recent years.
“The one thing I know is that usually what happens to the Jewish people is a bellwether that something could happen to other peoples,” he said. “Everyone could do more.”
In January, a man set fire to Beth Israel in Jackson, Miss., destroying several Torahs in the state’s oldest synagogue. The month before, a gunman opened fire at Australia’s Bondi Beach, killing 15 people in an attack that targeted Jews. In Manchester, England, two people were killed in October when a man drove a vehicle into people and then attacked others with a knife outside a synagogue on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar.
The Anti-Defamation League counts 19 terrorist plots or attacks motivated by antisemitism or anti-Zionism or targeting Jewish institutions and people in the United States since 2020, said Oren Segal, the organization’s senior vice president of counter-extremism and intelligence. Twelve of those have taken place since July 2024. (The count does not include Thursday’s attack in Michigan.)
Instances of antisemitic harassment, vandalism and assault have increased substantially in recent years, according to the Anti-Defamation League. The organization recorded more than 9,300 cases across the country in 2024, the latest year such data was available. That was the highest number since records of those incidents began in 1979.
Security experts say that when conflicts erupt in the Middle East, threats against Jewish communities in the United States and elsewhere often follow.
Many synagogues around the country, already accustomed to having a heavy security presence, increased precautions after the United States and Israel struck Iran in late February, Mr. Segal said. Law enforcement agencies have also increased attention to Jewish institutions.
“For anybody who hasn’t reached out to their law enforcement partners, now is the time,” Mr. Segal said, referring to synagogues and other Jewish organizations.
During a March 4 security briefing hosted by several Jewish organizations, terrorism experts specifically warned synagogue leaders in the United States to be on heightened alert for suspicious vehicles and to maintain their situational awareness.
The next day, Secure Community Network, an organization that provides security consulting for Jewish institutions in North America, sent out a bulletin to hundreds of law enforcement agencies around the country warning that threats would rise significantly after the start of war in the Middle East.
In the first four days after the United States and Israel began airstrikes on Iran, the organization found online more than 4,300 posts targeting Jews with violent rhetoric, a near doubling from the four days before the strikes began. Some of those posts specifically said that synagogues could be seen as fair targets.
In Michigan, the F.B.I. trained employees of Temple Israel in active shooter prevention in January, the agency’s Detroit office said on social media. With more than 12,000 members, Temple Israel is one of the largest Reform congregations in the country, and the largest in the Detroit area.
On Thursday, some combination of preparation and good luck meant the only fatality in the attack was the assailant himself. The synagogue’s preschool, which has 140 students, was in session.
In a statement, the synagogue praised the security guards who confronted the assailant as “heroic.”
“Everyone is safe,” the synagogue’s statement said. “Our teachers followed their training and kept the children safe and calm.”
Campbell Robertson and Neil Vigdor contributed reporting.
Ruth Graham is a national reporter, based in Dallas, covering religion, faith and values for The Times.
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