c. 1999 Religion News Service

UNDATED _ The rash of recent incidents is unsettling. Six Jews shot while walking home from synagogue services in suburban Chicago. Three Sacramento, Calif.-area synagogues set ablaze in a coordinated assault. A gunman opens fire at a Los Angeles Jewish community center, wounding five, including three young boys.

But as troubling as these incidents may be, Jewish leaders caution, it is important to remember that overt anti-Semitism is less prevalent in America today than ever before.”The last several years has seen an overall downward trend in anti-Semitic incidents,”said Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, which keeps close tabs on the issue.”We also track attitudes. Here as well, there has been improvement.” Over the last decade, according to ADL figures, an annual average of 1,741 anti-Semitic acts have been reported nationwide. In 1998, the figure was 1,611, a slight 2 percent increase compared to 1997, but still well below the 10-year average. The previous three years recorded steady declines.

Even more telling than the ADL’s statistics are what Gene Lichtenstein, the editor of the Los Angeles Jewish Journal, has labeled the”tangible examples of Jewish acceptance and success.” Jews, he wrote in a recent article published in the Jerusalem Report magazine, constitute less than 3 percent of the nation’s population. Yet Jews comprise 10 percent of the U.S. Senate, 22 percent of the Supreme Court and a quarter or more of the student populations of such elite universities as Columbia, Harvard and Yale. Jews are also well represented in the Clinton White House and the top rungs of the legal, medical, communications and entertainment fields.

Today, wrote Lichtenstein, it is Jews who are at the center of American life while it is”the anti-Semitic hate groups that have become the outsiders.” Christian theological acceptance of Judaism has also never been greater. The Roman Catholic Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America are just two examples of leading Christian denominations that have issued denunciations of what Jews have long regarded as deep-seated anti-Semitic teachings relating to Jesus’ death and Judaism’s rejection of his being the Messiah.

Even the United Nations, regarded by many American Jews as openly hostile to Israel because of the large number of Arab and Muslim member states with which it is in conflict, last year for the first time voted to condemn anti-Semitism as a form of intolerance.

All of this serves to make American Jews more secure _ even as their co-religionists in Russia suffer increasing anti-Semitism, prompting them to leave for Israel. Such a notion is foreign to all but a small number of American Jews and they act, by and large, out of religious motivation, not anti-Semitic fears.

To be sure, said Foxman, anti-Semitism still exists in the United States. It abounds on the Internet and among white supremacists such as Buford O. Furrow Jr., the man charged in the Los Angeles incident, for example. Moreover, the”hardcore anti-Semites linked to bullets and bombs are more in your face”than was the insipid and institutionalized anti-Semitism widely evident in American society just a few decades ago, Foxman added.

However, Foxman noted that two and possibly all three of the recent examples of high-profile anti-Semitic violence involved more than just Jews as targets.

An African-American and an Asian-American were also killed by the white supremacist who wounded the six Chicago Jews before taking his own life. The two brothers suspected in the Sacramento synagogue arsons have also been linked to the murders of two non-Jewish gay men.

In Los Angeles, Furrow reportedly told the FBI he also killed Filipino-American postal worker Joseph S. Ileto because he was non-white and worked for the federal government.

While anti-Semitism was a factor in each of the three cases, the larger motivation appears to be hatred among right-wing white supremacists for all those who are non-white, non-Christian (as they define the faith), foreign and connected in any way to the federal government.”We’re seeing something new here,”said Foxman.”We’re seeing bigots who do not discriminate against their targets, and they hate more than one target.”Someone who hates, hates anybody not like himself.” Despite the decline of anti-Semitism in the United States and the enhanced position of the nearly 6 million-member American Jewish community, Jews, ironically, still view anti-Semitism as the greatest threat they face in this nation.

A recent American Jewish Committee survey found 62 percent of American Jews consider anti-Semitism to be their biggest concern _ more than intermarriage, assimilation and a decline in Jewish religious observance, all of which community leaders say are the leading threats to group continuity in the years ahead.”Notwithstanding the strength of democratic institutions and legal protections in the United States, there remains a significant percentage of our community who simply see threats to their well-being,”said Bruce M. Ramer, AJC president.

Some who closely monitor the Jewish scene say this ongoing fear of anti-Semitism stems from community scars persisting from the Holocaust and past rejection by the American mainstream. Critics say the situation is perpetuated by Jewish organizations who use the fear of anti-Semitism to rally Jews to their cause.

Arthur Hertzberg, a New York University humanities professor and Conservative rabbi, is one such critic.”There are some Jewish organizations who live off of anti-anti-Semitism,”he said, even as American Jews are”absolutely free and equal in America.” Hertzberg agrees that American Jews have never been more accepted _ despite the recent violence involving anti-Semitism.”We are a part of the American establishment and can be Ivy League presidents, Cabinet members and CEOs of leading corporations,”he said.”Unfortunately,”he added,”crackpots are still around. But where once they threw a rock or shouted a bigoted remark, today they have access to weapons of mass destruction.”And that’s why Jews can be very safe in America professionally and socially, but our grandchildren are not safe from random violence while playing on a Jewish center yard.”

DEA END RIFKIN