A synagogue in Brookline, Massachusetts, is on alert after a man called police and claimed to have placed bombs in what authorities are calling a swatting incident.
Terrifying 911 audio shared by the Brookline Police Department depicts the moments on the evening of Aug. 18 when the caller told police he had put two pressure cooker bombs at Temple Beth Zion.
"Why do you want to kill them?" police are heard asking the man, who replied, "Because they're Jews."
Police received the call around 7 p.m. that Friday. Officers arrived as Rabbi Claudia Kreiman was conducting service.
"Come and let's continue singing outside. I'm going to turn off the YouTube and tell whoever who did this that it's not going to work with us," said the rabbi, who was livestreaming the service.
The caller claimed to have placed the bombs in the "main room." Police did not find anything inside.
"You're just hoping to get everybody out of there, keep the situation calm and under control," said Brookline Police Deputy Superintendent Paul Campbell, whose team worked to secure the building.
Investigators later traced the number to one involved in another swatting incident at
They later traced the number to another swatting incident at a Colorado Jewish institution.
The Anti-Defamation League attributes the calls to a group of online trolls who have targeted about 44 Jewish institutions throughout the country in July and August.
"It is pure malice. It is people wishing to be disruptive," said Rabbi Jonah Steinberg, the regional director of the Anti-Defamation League in New England and a member of Temple Beth Zion.
Steinberg wasn't at the synagogue on the night of the incident, but says he is proud of the way Kreiman addressed the congregation and handled the situation.
The temple says it's conducted meetings with rabbis across the country to prepare for such incidents, which came in handy when the threat came.
"I don't know how many of you read the email we sent today about this new thing happening that's called swatting, so we need to evacuate the temple, we just got a bomb threat -- it's probably nothing," Kreiman said as she addressed her congregation on the evening of the threat.
After conducting research into hate crimes throughout the years, the ADL found a 36% increase in antisemitic hate crimes in 2022 compared to the previous year.
"Some of them are white supremacists who are doing this to try and scare people. They are not scaring us. We're not going away," said Jeremy Yamin, vice president for security and operations at Combined Jewish Philanthropies.
The organization created a communal security initiative to help Jewish institutions across the country prepare for swatting incidents.
