He said the shootings “compound the distress” for people still reeling from the shootings last month in nearby Monterey Park, Calif., where 11 people were killed in a ballroom studio, and in Beverly Crest, where three people were killed at a short-term rental.
“No one should risk their lives to go to a dance or to religious services,” Mr. Lieu said.
The Anti-Defamation League said there were at least 2,717 incidents of antisemitic harassment, vandalism and assault in the United States in 2021, the most it had recorded since it started tracking these events in 1979.
The federal count of hate crimes fell in 2021, but Justice Department officials warned that the report did not reflect a complete, or very accurate, representation of hate crimes because it was missing information from scores of police departments, including some in California and in New York City.
Earlier this month, the police charged a 26-year-old man with firebombing a synagogue in Bloomfield, N.J. In November, two men were charged in New York with multiple felony counts, including criminal possession of a weapon and making a terroristic threat, in what the authorities said was a “developing threat to the Jewish community.” Also in November, an 18-year-old man from Middlesex County, N.J., was arrested and charged with threatening to attack a synagogue and Jews.
The police in Los Angeles said on Friday that there would be an increased presence of officers at Jewish places of worship in Pico-Robertson and in surrounding neighborhoods over the weekend “in an abundance of caution.”
Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean and director of global social action at the Wiesenthal Center, encouraged Jews to observe the sabbath on Saturday.
“We’re lucky that we’re not going to funerals,” he said. “That’s just the reality.”
Corina Knoll contributed reporting.
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