A survey released Tuesday by the Anti-Defamation League shows nearly two-thirds of American Jews feel less safe now than at any other time during the past decade.
The survey, conducted by YouGov on behalf of the ADL, polled 538 Jewish American adults in January.
The results show:
- 63% reported that they are less safe now than they were a decade ago.
- 54% of Jews in America have either experienced or witnessed an incident they believed was motivated by anti-Semitism over the past five years.
- 49% said they have heard anti-Semitic comments, slurs or threats directed at others.
- 21% said they were the victims of anti-Semitic harassment.
One in seven respondents said they know someone who has been physically attacked because they are Jewish.
“Our tracking has shown that lethal and nonlethal anti-Semitic attacks have been on the rise in recent years, and now we’ve also found that American Jews are deeply concerned for their personal safety and their families’ and communities’ security in a way that they haven’t been in more than a decade,” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said.
About half of people polled said they were worried a person wearing a religious skullcap or display of Judaism would be physically assaulted or verbally harassed on the street, according to the study results.
“It is a sad state of affairs that in the face of widespread anxiety about anti-Semitic attacks, some Jewish Americans are modifying their routines and avoiding public displays of Judaism to minimize the risk of being targeted,” Greenblatt said.
The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 4.4 percentage points.