BLACKSBURG, Va. – The Jewish community continues to celebrate Passover at a time when the country is seeing an increase in anti-Semitic attacks.
In March, 10 News told you about the Blacksburg Jewish Community Center being vandalized. The President of the center, Eric Hallerman, said it can be hard to be in a time of celebration with everything going on.
“It’s hard to be in your holy season and this is going on in the background,” Hallerman said.
Hallerman is not alone in the fight. Virginia Att. Gen. Jason Miyares has created an Antisemitism Task Force under the direction of Gov. Glenn Youngkin.
“No Virginian should be looking over their shoulder in fear of how they’re practicing their faith, how they’re deciding to worship God … whether it’s on a college campus, or they’re at a community center or a synagogue,” Miyares said.
Miyares just recently returned from a trip to Auschwitz, Poland, and Israel.
“We saw the death camps and we saw in many ways the very worst of humanity. Then we flew to Israel, which is really the only functional democracy in the middle east and saw in many ways the best of humanity … the fact they have freedom of religion, freedom of speech there,” Miyares said.
Just before Miyares’ trip, the Anti-Defamation League released an audit of the antisemitism attacks in the US in 2022.
According to the report, Virginia had 69 antisemitism incidents in 2022. In 2021, the state saw 46 incidents.
“A lot of it is empowerment. It’s empowering people with information. It’s empowering people with training. It’s making sure the people in the community are communicating with our office of how we can help them,” Miyares said.
Hallerman said the country used to not be this way.
“A lot of this vandalism, a lot of this harassment, sometimes it’s worst than that … even the occasional assault … but that didn’t use to be that way. America was becoming more tolerant, now it’s becoming less tolerant,” Hallerman said.
He commended the efforts of Att. Gen. Miyares and Gov. Youngkin for taking an initiative to try and fight the issue.