LOS ANGELES (EJP)—Following online bomb threats, three Los Angeles synagogue campuses were shut down on Shabbat, The Jewish Journal reported.
The Glazer and Irmas campuses of Wilshire Boulevard Temple as well as University Synagogue in Brentwood were closed.
A staff member of University Synagogue said a staff member “found an email that was beyond nasty — horrific language, and threatening” in a temple email account and its executive director called the police.
About 10 police officers answered the call. The building was empty at the time.
At Wilshire Boulevard Temple, a threat came in via an online submission form on the synagogue’s website. Los Angeles Police Department was notified immediately and the synagogue’s campuses were shut down.
No one was at either the synagogue’s Irmas Campus in West L.A. or its flagship Koreatown building, the Glazer Campus, at the time the threats were made.
The shutdowns follow a wave of more than 160 threats to synagogues and other Jewish buildings between January and March made by phone and email, including two against the Westside Jewish Community Center in Los Angeles. Two separate arrests have been made in connection with that series of threats.
An 18-year-old dual American Israeli living in Ashkelon, Israel was arrested in March under suspicion of being behind most of a series of bomb and other threats to Jewish communities in the US, Europe, Australia and New Zealand that date back around six months.