Anti-Semitic incidents in the United States declined in 1995, a drop commensurate with the trend in crime rates across the country, according to the Anti-Defamation League’s annual audit of anti-Semitism.
The ADL recorded 1,843 incidents last year, a decreased of 11 percent from 1994, and the first decline in three years.
In 1995, 108 arrests were made for ant-Semitic hate crimes, down from 141 in the previous year. Forty-seven states and the District of Columbia have hate- crime statutes.
“Through the intensified efforts of law enforcement and continued educational outreach, we hope this is the beginning of a trend away from anti-Semitic acts,” Abraham Foxman, the ADL national director, said in a statement. “But, we must remain vigilant.”
Among the reported incidents, Freddy’s Fashion Mart, a Jewish-owned business in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City, was torched in December in an attack widely believed to have been motivated by anti-Semitic rhetoric.
In Cincinnati, a rabbi’s son was beaten by four youths until he collapsed.
The audit, released Wednesday, is based on reports made by 42 states and the District of Columbia to the ADL and to law enforcement agencies.
Many of the acts, the ADL pointed out, are not crimes, such as the distribution of hate propaganda and racial slurs, both of which are protected by the First Amendment.
The ADL audit revealed that the states with the largest Jewish populations also have the highest number of incidents.
Fully 55 percent of all reported acts occurred in New York (370), California (264), New Jersey (228) and Florida (152).
Personalized attacks on Jews and Jewish institutions continue to be the most common anti-Semitic incidents, totaling 1,116. These are described by the ADL as “in your face” intimidation and hostile acts.
In 1995, these included a severed pig’s head mounted to the front door of a synagogue in York, Pa., and shortly after the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, a spectator at a Cleveland Browns football game holding up a sign reading, “They killed the wrong Jew,” referring to team owner Art Modell, who decided to move Browns to Baltimore.
Vandalism accounted for 727 of the reported anti-Semitic incidents, but the only category that showed an increase was cemetery desecrations, which rose form 18 to 22.
College campuses saw their first decrease in anti-Semitic incidents in seven years, from the 1994 high of 143 to 118, a decline of 17 percent.
The number of skinhead-related incidents also decreased, from 24 to 17 in 1995.
“It’s a statement about American society,” said Bernard Reisman, Klutznik professor of Contemporary American Jewish Studies at Brandeis University. “As people become more sophisticated, they become more accepting of one another.”
But, Kenneth Stern, program specialist on anti-Semitism and extremism at the American Jewish Committee, said the focus should be on long-term trends, rather than yearly records.
“It would be dangerous to jump to conclusions based on statistics from one year to the next,” Stern said.
It is still important to continue with “monitoring, surveying, education, political activism and long-term research to discover what is likely to occur and what are the implications,” he added.
Anti-Semitism will never completely disappear, Foxman said in an interview. “Unfortunately, until we develop a vaccine against bigotry and anti-Semitism, it will always be with us.”
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