Portland, OR – Staff from Congregation Beth Israel, the city’s reform synagogue in Northwest Portland, on Monday morning found an antisemitic death threat scrawled in yellow paint on the outside of the building and scorch marks from recent fires set in front of the doors to the sanctuary.
Rabbi Michael Z. Cahana said finding the death threat, “Die Juden,” painted on the exterior wall facing Northwest Flanders Street just four days after Yom HaShoah, International Holocaust Remembrance Day, is a chilling reminder of the need to “recommit to being vigilant against antisemitism.”
“It’s easy for us in Portland to think this doesn’t happen around here. That we’re free of antisemitism and hate speech, but the reality is it’s very much a part of our world,” Cahana said. “It’s very much of a part of the Pacific Northwest.”
After consulting with community security professionals and police, Cahana said he doesn’t believe this is part of a plot or plan for violence.
He stressed that he doesn’t want his congregants or the community to live in fear.
“But be aware,” Cahana said. “And how poignant it is to have this just a few days after having our community’s Holocaust survivors in our sanctuary, where we were honoring their eyewitness,their experience. It really recommits us to being vigilant against antisemitism.”
The phrase painted across the outside wall of the historic sanctuary contains the German word for Jews.
Clergy and staff have seen other scorch marks from small fires set on the synagogue’s campus, the rabbi said, but believe those likely were set by people smoking drugs.
The scorch marks discovered Monday were on the side Carriage Door to the synagogue and in the entry way, just off to the side of the main entrance, he said. They weren’t present during the day on Sunday, Cahana said.
The synagogue staff filed a report with the Portland Police Bureau, the FBI’s hate crimes coordinator, the Oregon Fusion Center, which works withfederal, state and local law enforcement agencies to produce threat assessments, and the Secure Community Network, a nonprofit that works to ensure the safety and security of the organized Jewish community in North America.
Oregon’s U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, who is a member of Congregation Beth Israel, spoke out against the vandalism in a Twitter post later Monday.
“Hate speech and vandalism must never be allowed to terrorize Portland or any community,” Wyden wrote. “I stand with Rabbi Cahana and our entire synagogue by adding my voice to his when he says we all must be vigilant against these attacks.”
The Rev. Chuck Currie, a local minister in the United Church of Christ, also condemned “the antisemitic attack” against the Portland synagogue.
“Such hatred has no place in the City of Roses- or anywhere. I stand with my friend and colleague Rabbi @michaelcahana, & all my Jewish brothers & sisters,” he wrote on Twitter.
