A Pennsylvania synagogue’s Shabbat services were disrupted and cut short on June 5 with people shouting anti-Semitic slurs, including “Death to Jews.”
The Morning Call newspaper reported that Keneseth Israel, which is located in Allentown, had around 75 participants during the service when the Zoombombing occurred. Keneseth Israel administrator Vicki Dunn told The Morning Call that she first noticed that something was wrong when she heard “strange music.”
“Then people started saying, ‘Death to the Jews,’ ” Dunn said. “We heard a ‘Hitler’ thrown in there. It was traumatizing.”
She added: “You feel like you’re attacked in your synagogue, and like you’re attacked in your home.”
The synagogue has reported the incident to local authorities and has since changed its Zoom security settings to prevent future Zoombombings; a virtual bar mitzvah held the following morning occurred without any disruptions.
“Zoombombing” is the term used to describe instances of people disrupting Zoom video conference calls, oftentimes with anti-Semitic and racial slurs and sometimes with pornographic imagery. Zoombombing has become more frequent during the COVID-19 pandemic because people are being relegated to using video conference calls more often.
Anti-Defamation League (ADL) Philadelphia Regional Director Shira Goodman told The Morning Call that although the Zoombombing of synagogues’ virtual services has recently declined, the Keneseth Israel Zoombombing was one of two instances of Pennsylvania synagogues being Zoombombed over the past two weeks.
“If you don’t call out hate at these levels, those are the kinds of things that fester and can escalate,” Goodman said.
Liora Rez, director of the Stop Anti-Semitism watchdog, said in a statement to the Journal, “It’s very frustrating to see that Zoom is not able to keep up with their ongoing security breaches. We highly recommend users move to ‘Google Meet/Hangout’ or ‘Microsoft Team’ to avoid bigots infiltrating their virtual spaces.”
The Israel Group founder and President Jack Saltzberg also said in a statement to the Journal, “Anti-Semitism has existed since Egypt and it will never go away. Only the delivery platforms are new, so it is not shocking to witness anti-Semitic Zoombombing.”
In an April statement, Scott Brady, a United States attorney in Pennsylvania, vowed to crack down on Zoombombers.
“Hackers are disrupting business and community meetings for sport and targeting specific groups, including addiction recovery meetings, in order to mock, harass and interfere with treatment,” Brady said. “This is another low point in this crisis. We are better than this. DOJ will use all of our resources to find, expose and prosecute these low-lifes.”
American Jewish Committee Director for Combating Anti-Semitism Holly Huffnagle told the Journal in a May 11 story that while only a handful of people are perpetuating Zoombombing, it is “affecting multiple Jewish student meetings; they’re affecting board meetings where there’s Jewish chairs, so this has been a huge problem.”
The ADL has explained how people can utilize Zoom’s security settings to prevent Zoombombing from occurring and how to handle a Zoombombing incident if it occurs.
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