“A Channel 4 helicopter followed us,” a Hebrew Day School fifth-grader told his father afterward. For the second time in less than a year, a bomb threat had forced the evacuation of the Jewish Community Center on Birch Hollow Dr.
Art Gershowitz, the student’s dad, says that the kids handled the situation calmly. No bomb was found, and the evacuation was lifted after about an hour. Parent Gil Seinfeld believes that the threat misfired.
“Whoever made the call was trying to make Jewish people feel isolated,” Seinfeld explains. “But we’ve got so much support from faith communities,” he says, including a church that took up a collection for Hebrew Day and a local Muslim activist who phoned to offer support. After a recent arson fire at a Pittsfield Twp. mosque, the Jewish Federation of Greater Ann Arbor reciprocated with a CrowdRise.com campaign to help pay for repairs.
The speedy evacuations reflected the preparedness of the JCC staff, who had rehearsed their response with the Ann Arbor Police Department. “Active shooter measures, evacuation procedures and overall safety/security conversations have been taking place for several years now” with both Jewish and Muslim organizations, emails AAPD detective Matthew Lige. Though authorities determined the mosque fire was not a hate crime, in December the Islamic Center of Ann Arbor received a letter warning Muslims to leave America before President Trump did “to you Muslims what Hitler did to the Jews.”
Shortly after the JCC call, a onetime New York-based journalist was arrested for making bomb threats to Jewish organizations around the country. But those threats were emailed, and that suspect has not been connected to the Ann Arbor calls, says Lige, who is working with the FBI.
Jewish Federation executive director David Shtulman emails that he’s alarmed at the surge in the “vandalism, graffiti, hate messages sent to Jewish organizations on a daily basis.” But while the ugliness has increased since the election, he points out that the JCC has employed armed guards for more than a decade–a precaution put in place after a white supremacist shot five people at a Los Angeles JCC. “We believe with our protocols in place there’s no safer place to be than the JCC or Hebrew Day,” he says. “We hope our parents feel the same way.”