Nearly a third of Jewish Americans say they have hidden their religious identity or avoided carrying items that would identify oneself as Jewish in public due to threats of anti-Semitism, according to a poll released Wednesday.
A study by the American Jewish Coalition (AJC) found that 31 percent of the respondents said they had "avoided publicly wearing, carrying, or displaying things that might help people identify [them] as a Jew."
Twenty-five percent of those surveyed also told pollsters that they at least sometimes "avoid certain places, events, or situations out of concern for [their] safety or comfort as a Jew."
The survey's results come as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) says the rate of anti-Semitic incidents has doubled in the U.S. since 2015.
There continues to be "an alarmingly high number of anti-Semitic acts," ADL national director Jonathan Greenblatt said in April.
“We’ve worked hard to push back against anti-Semitism, and succeeded in improving hate crime laws, and yet we continue to experience an alarmingly high number of anti-Semitic acts,” Greenblatt said at the time.
Early numbers for 2019 suggest that the problem is continuing, as the ADL recorded roughly the same number of anti-Semitic attacks in the first half of 2019 as it did in the first half of 2018.
AJC's poll contacted 1,283 Jews living in the U.S. over the age of 18 between Sept. 11-Oct. 6. The margin of error is plus or minus 4.2 percentage points.
