Official: Man who made synagogue threat has been identified

Associated Press, Michael Balsamo, Mike Catalini

Updated: Nov 4, 2022 / 10:25 AM CDT

Hoboken Police officers stand watch outside the United Synagogue of Hoboken, Thursday, Nov. 3, 2022, in Hoboken, N.J. The FBI says it has received credible information about a threat to synagogues in New Jersey. The FBI’s Newark office released a statement Thursday afternoon that characterizes it as a broad threat. The statement urged synagogues to “take all security precautions to protect your community and facility.”(AP Photo/Ryan Kryska)

Federal agents have identified the man they believe posted a broad online threat against synagogues in New Jersey but do not believe he was planning to carry out a specific plot, a law enforcement official said Friday.

The man, whose identity was not immediately released, was questioned by law enforcement and told agents he had been bullied in the past and harbored anger toward Jewish people, the official said. But investigators do not believe the man had the means or motive to carry out any specific attack, the official added.

The official could not discuss details of the investigation publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

The FBI said Thursday that it had received credible information about a “broad” threat to synagogues in New Jersey, a warning that prompted some municipalities to send extra police officers to guard houses of worship.

The nature of the threat was vague. The FBI’s Newark office released a statement urging synagogues to “take all security precautions to protect your community and facility” but wouldn’t say anything about who made the threat or why.

The alert was posted after officials discovered an online threat directed broadly at synagogues in New Jersey, the law enforcement official said Thursday. The posting did not target any specific synagogue by name, the official said.

Public warnings about nonspecific threats against Jewish institutions, made by a variety of groups including Christian supremacists and Islamist extremists, aren’t unusual in the New York City metropolitan area, and many turn out to be false alarms. But the area has also seen deadly attacks..

Five years ago, two New Jersey men were sentenced to 35 years in prison after being convicted of a series of attacks in 2012 that included the firebombings of two synagogues. They also threw a Molotov cocktail into the home of a rabbi as he slept with his wife and children.

In 2019, a man stabbed five people at a Hanukkah celebration at a rabbi’s home in an Orthodox Jewish community north of New York City, fatally wounding one person.