Jewish Americans changing behaviors in wake of rise in antisemitic acts, survey shows

More Jewish Americans say they’re changing their behaviors out of concern for their safety, according to the annual American Jewish Committee survey released Tuesday

The annual survey takes a snapshot of American Jewish adults’ perspectives on antisemitism around the country. The survey first launched in early October, days before the attacks in Israel.

Organizers, including Holly Huffnagle, moved to pause the survey following the events that took place on Oct. 7, 2023, and relaunched in the subsequent weeks, adding additional questions to capture the feelings of the Jewish community in those moments.

"We had to pull out of the fields," said Huffnagle, AJC’s U.S. Director for Combating Antisemitism. "It was not a good time to be serving American Jews on a related but still a separate issue, and we wanted our data to continue to be accurate but use that time out of the field to ask new questions."

There was a big jump in people saying they were avoiding places and situation due to safety concerns. In 2022, 16% of Jewish Americans said they avoided events or locations –  jumping 10 percentage points by the end of 2023 to 26%.

In addition to that, the survey found that if someone had been a victim of an antisemitic attack or remark already, they were far more likely to change behaviors and the likelihood they’re going to avoid going to places jumps to 45%.

A lot of the hate toward Jewish community members is coming from online -- 51% of people reported seeing or hearing remarks related to their religion on Facebook. A sizable share say these incidents make them feel physically threatened.

"We know antisemitism is a symptom of something much worse in our society," Huffnagle said. "Something that might start with with Jewish people is not going to end with with Jews. We know this throughout history, actually, unfortunately."

Huffnagle says there isn’t one clear answer as to why there’s a rise in antisemitism. Historically, she says antisemitism increases during election years, economic downturns and conflict.

"All of these things together, amplified online, is really what we're seeing in this moment and we've captured the impact on the Jewish community," Huffnagle said.