ADL’s audit is consistent with larger trends showing that Jewish Americans face increasing threats and attacks, whether they support Israel or not.
Boulder community honors attack victims, condemns anti-Semitism
The Boulder Jewish Community Center held a vigil bringing together community members to support the victims of the incendiary attack.
Anti-Semitic attacks in the United States will reach record levels in 2025, a new report shows, amid several high-profile attacks against Jews around the world.
The Anti-Defamation League’s annual audit May 6 showed that while incidents it classifies as anti-Semitic have declined, physical attacks have increased slightly from 196 in 2024 to 203 in 2025. In 2022, the last full year before the Israel-Hamas war, assaults fell to 111, although at the time the ADL used a different definition to count anti-Semitic incidents.
The 2025 audit found three people died in anti-Semitic attacks, the first time since 2019, when American Jews were killed in hate crimes.
“The fact that assaults are on the rise shows why many in the Jewish community feel vulnerable,” Oren Segal, ADL’s senior vice president of counterextremism and intelligence, told USA TODAY. “There is still a lot of anxiety.”
The audit and reports from other watchdog and government agencies that track hate crimes against Jewish Americans show an increase in incidents since the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, and Israel’s subsequent devastating siege of Gaza. ADL audits include harassment, vandalism, and physical assault. Although researchers use law enforcement and the press to collect data, the largest source of information on incidents is directly reported by alleged victims.
The ADL has faced intense scrutiny in recent years for what critics believe is conflating pro-Palestinian activities with anti-Semitism.
But outside experts said the ADL’s audit is consistent with larger trends in hate crime reporting that show Jewish Americans face increasing threats and attacks, regardless of whether they support Israel.
“The targeting of the Jewish community, the violence against individuals because of their identity, is on the rise,” said Rachel Carol Rivas, associate director of research at the Southern Poverty Law Center, a group that monitors and combats prejudice. “And we’re seeing it being politicized and weaponized. It’s shocking.”
According to FBI data in August, anti-Semitic hate crimes accounted for nearly 70% of all religion-based hate crimes. Although Jews make up only 2% of the U.S. population, they will account for 16% of all hate crime victims in 2024, the highest level since FBI records began. Hate crimes are historically underreported, making accurate reporting difficult, and federal data often lags for long periods of time.
Carol Rivas added that the decline in nonviolent incidents in the audit appears to be partially due to fewer in-person events, leaflet and leaflet distribution, and other gatherings, especially among white supremacists and neo-Nazis. Still, she said the SPLC is seeing an increase in conspiracy theories, metaphors and language about Jews, especially among young people on social media.
Since ADL reporting began in 1979, the audit found that 2025 was the third-highest year on record for anti-Semitic incidents, with 6,274 incidents, but that was down from 2024, when there were more than 9,300 incidents.
According to the ADL, incidents at Jewish facilities have fallen significantly, from 627 in 2024 to just 59 in 2025, including a record drop in bomb threats. However, 2024 reflects a sharp increase from just 91 cases in 2022. The audit showed fewer incidents occurred at the university compared to 2024, when the ADL said pro-Palestinian camp movements caused a spike in incidents.
ADL’s characterization has been controversial, as demonstrators, including many Jewish students, claimed they were advocating for Palestinian rights.
The ADL said harassment and vandalism appear to be on the decline, but physical assaults — a clearer data point, experts say — are at an all-time high.
According to the audit, at least 300 people, ranging from politicians to random people, were assaulted. In April, a man firebombed the home of Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and his family hours after they celebrated Passover. In December, the suspect allegedly stabbed a Jewish man after making anti-Semitic remarks outside a Jewish center in New York City.
ADL identified three deaths in 2025. In late May, a gunman shot and killed two Israeli embassy employees at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, DC. Days later, an 82-year-old Jewish woman in Colorado died from her injuries after a man threw a gasoline bomb at her at a pro-Israel rally. Suspects in both attacks made comments about Israeli actions in Gaza, officials said.
Questions about how ADL defines anti-Semitism
The ADL said its audit distinguishes between criticism of Israel and anti-Semitism. But since the 2023 attacks, ADL’s annual audits have included “certain expressions” opposed to Zionism, as well as violent resistance to Israel and Zionists, which the audit methodology says “could be seen as supporting terrorism or attacks against Jews, Israelis, or Zionists.”
For example, the progressive news outlet Jewish Currents found in a 2023 audit of the ADL that the pro-Palestinian protest slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” was counted multiple times as an anti-Semitic incident. Many Palestinian rights advocates say this is a call for freedom and equality, but pro-Israel groups see the slogan as a call for the removal of Jews from modern Israel.
Incidents related to Israel or Zionism accounted for about 45% of all incidents, the audit said, adding that this was down compared to 2024 but remained high from before 2023.
Brendan Lantz, director of the Institute for Hate Crime Research and Policy at Florida State University, said the report attempts to distinguish conceptually between criticism of Israel and anti-Semitism, but calls for a broader definition that allows for the inclusion of Israel-related expressions.
While the overall findings appear consistent with other sources showing an increase in anti-Semitism from 2023 onwards, the ADL dataset differs from federal and survey-based data, Lantz said in an email. ADL uses non-criminal incidents, broader criteria and reports from other sources, he said. As such, this data is better understood as a trend in ADL data collection rather than conclusive evidence of a national pattern.
Arie Tuchman, director of the Nexus Antisemitism Research Center and former ADL antisemitism researcher, said the increase in assaults is a red flag, especially for deadly attacks in 2025, even though the overall number of incidents is down.
He added that while audits are critical, incidents need to be studied to understand people’s motivations and factors that lead to physical assaults against Jews.
“Just looking at a list of cases doesn’t give you the answer,” he says. “I need to study more deeply.”
Eduardo Cuevas is based in New York City. Contact us via email (emcuevas1@usatoday.com) or Signal (emcuevas.01).
