Naples, FL – Rabbi Adam Miller was exiting a school board meeting in his city of Naples, Florida, when two men approached him in the parking lot.
“Your prophet is not real, and Judaism is not a real religion,” they yelled at him, according to the subsequent police report. The rabbi recounted other colorful epithets, too: “Judaism is wrong.” “You’re on the path to sin.”
The encounter startled Miller, the senior rabbi of Temple Shalom since 2010. He knew that local students had experienced antisemitism at school and was aware that his city had a checkered past when it came to including Jews, but he had never before been accosted in this way.
“I was still wearing my kippah. I was clearly identified as the rabbi,” he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency about the incident, which took place in early May. “Their tone was very hateful and angry, and they would not stop following me.”