ADL Audit: Assaults on American Jews Hit Historic High in 2025

The ADL’s 2025 annual audit — released Wednesday — recorded 6,274 antisemitic incidents, an average of 17 per day. While total incidents dropped 33% from 2024’s record, physical assaults reached a historic high of 203 incidents and deadly-weapon attacks surged 39% to 32 events — including the Pennsylvania governor firebombing. This is the third-highest year on record since ADL began tracking in 1979, behind only 2023 and 2024.

• 203 antisemitic assaults in 2025, a 4% increase from 2024’s 196 — the highest ever recorded.
• 32 deadly-weapon attacks, up 39% from 23 in 2024 — also a historic high.
• Overall incidents dropped 33% to 6,274 — led by a steep fall in campus incidents — but 2025 remains the third-worst year since 1979.
• 17 incidents per day on average — the post-Oct. 7 baseline has permanently reset upward from pre-2023 levels.
• Campus incidents declined significantly year-over-year, a rare positive signal in an otherwise deteriorating physical threat environment.

The split between declining total incidents and record physical violence exposes a structural shift: mass harassment and vandalism are cooling while targeted, lethal-intent attacks are accelerating. The elevated baseline — even in a 'good' year — is now more than double pre-Oct. 7 norms, which means the community is absorbing ongoing crisis-level violence while the political system debates whether the emergency is real.

Jewish leaders are warning that the latest campus anti-Israel strategy is direct institutional assault on Hillel — the largest Jewish campus organization in the world. The New School’s student government voted on May 1 to defund and sever ties with its Hillel chapter, the first such vote in the US, citing alleged “ties to international law violations.” The university administration rejected the vote — but the playbook has been written.

• The New School student senate voted May 1 to defund its Hillel chapter — the first time a student government has voted to cut ties with Hillel in the US.
• The administration rejected the vote, but the USS compliance committee produced a 35+ page report coordinated with “human rights and legal organizations” to justify it.
• Jewish leaders warn the Hillel campaign is a deliberate strategy to delegitimize the main institutional address for Jewish campus life.
• Hillel International is in talks with the New School administration; the chapter called the vote “a deeply painful and antisemitic act.”

Defunding Hillel is a structural escalation beyond protest and encampments — it weaponizes student government bureaucracy to formally excise Jewish institutional presence from campus life. The 35-page compliance report, drafted in coordination with advocacy organizations, is a replicable template: expect similar votes at other campuses within the 2026-2027 academic year.

Belgian prosecutors in Antwerp have formally indicted three Jewish mohels for performing ritual circumcisions without medical certification, triggering sharp condemnations from Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar and US Ambassador Bill White. White warned: “Belgium will be thought of now as antisemitic by the world.” Sa’ar accused Belgium of using criminal law “to prosecute Jews for practicing Judaism.” Belgian prosecutors are seeking a full correctional court trial.

• Three Antwerp mohels face criminal indictment for intentional assault and battery against minors and unlawful practice of medicine.
• US Ambassador Bill White: “This is WRONG and won’t be tolerated” — one of the sharper diplomatic broadsides from a US ambassador in recent memory.
• Belgian FM disputed Sa’ar’s characterization as “defamatory” and offered to travel to Israel to discuss — an unusual diplomatic response.
• The case follows a 2025 investigation that included raids on the mohels’ homes and their arrests.

Criminalizing brit milah is a historic form of anti-Jewish persecution with echoes going back to Antiochus — doing it through secular medical regulation rather than explicit religious prohibition is a new legal mechanism for an ancient attack. The Belgium case will function as a precedent test: whether European criminal law can be used to suppress core Jewish religious practice under the guise of child protection.

Two Jewish Democrats from Chicago are taking sharply different paths on Israel and antisemitism as they position for possible 2028 presidential bids. Rahm Emanuel has been a vocal pragmatist, criticizing the left on Israel and antisemitism. JB Pritzker, in a new Politico magazine profile, said Israel criticism is “crossing into antisemitism” — but framed the antisemitism problem as connected to anti-Netanyahu sentiment and signaled he won’t change his broadly progressive positioning to win pro-Israel voters.

• Pritzker told Politico: “Antisemitism has often been connected to people’s views about Israel” — connecting anti-Netanyahu sentiment to antisemitic slurs.
• Pritzker said he believes “a minority of folks” use Israel opposition as an excuse for antisemitism, and will not moderate his positions for Jewish voters.
• Emanuel has taken a more combative approach — publicly calling out left-wing antisemitism and positioning himself as the pro-Israel pragmatist in the field.
• Threats against Pritzker and his family have increased in recent years as antisemitism has spiked, he told the magazine.

The Pritzker-Emanuel split is a preview of the central tension in the 2028 Democratic primary: whether the party's Israel-adjacent antisemitism problem is best addressed by confrontation (Emanuel) or by accommodation wrapped in mild condemnation (Pritzker). The Jewish vote and donor base are watching which posture gains traction with the broader Democratic electorate.