America is entering into an “assassination culture,” the Network Contagion Research Institute and Rutgers University’s Social Perception Lab warned earlier this year, with political violence becoming increasingly common and justified by a growing segment of the population, particularly on the extreme left.

“Given the current economic volatility and institutional distrust, the online normalization of political violence may increasingly translate into offline action,” the groups wrote in an April report, largely based on the killing of Brian Thompson, a UnitedHealthcare CEO, who was shot in Midtown Manhattan last December, and the assassination attempt against President Donald Trump last June. Their prediction has since proven tragically accurate.

Days after the report was published, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s home was set on fire by an arsonist. Weeks later, two Israeli Embassy staffers were fatally shot on May 21 outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, and just over a week after that, a march for Israeli hostages in Boulder, Colo., was firebombed, killing one person. The following month, a Democratic lawmaker was killed in Minnesota and another was seriously injured by the same gunman. And on Wednesday, conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot and killed by a sniper.

With antisemitism still raging throughout America, Jewish leaders — executive directors, CEOs and rabbis — are increasingly at risk as the public face of their institutions and movements. They are already being targeted online, at events, on college campuses and at their homes, and experts say that increased security at synagogues is not enough; Jewish leaders need individual protection.

“Not so long ago, the CEO wasn’t necessarily the public face of the organization,” Hal Lewis, CEO and consultant at Leadership for Impact LLC, an executive coaching and organizational consulting firm specializing in nonprofit leadership, told eJewishPhilanthropy. “But since COVID and certainly since the Gaza war, CEOs are called upon [to] negotiate with government officials, they meet with university people, they address public rallies, they do interfaith meetings.”

Over the past six months, Lewis’ clients have contacted him worried about their houses and family being attacked. Their concerns are warranted after numerous incidents, such as last June’s when antisemitic graffiti was painted on the private homes of leaders from the Brooklyn Museum. “These aren’t people who should be worried about sending their kids to the local Jewish day school,” he said, “or their spouse being involved in communal life in a different capacity.”

Because of that fear, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for nonprofits to recruit and retain top-level professionals, Lewis said. 

This shift to targeting individuals partly occurred after the Gaza war protest encampments on campuses died down, Michael Masters, national director and CEO of Secure Community Network, told eJP.

“Initially, after Oct. 7, we saw these huge numbers of encampments, and one of the transitional strategies that we saw many of these entities undertake was less of the encampments and more of the individual targeting of prominent members of the community,” he said. “Those are not necessarily CEOs, but class presidents, people that are outspoken on the issue of Israel or support for Israel or the hostage issue, certainly [for example] in Rochester [where] the director of Hillel [was] accused of genocide and war crimes [in campus posters.]”

The threats are also not only coming from the obvious sources, Masters said. “In many cases, for many of our institutions or leadership, it’s not a threat from a foreign or domestic terrorist organization,” he said. “It may be because a member of the clergy is involved in helping a couple through a divorce or there is a custodial interference issue between two parents over a minor child or we have individuals who are sexual predators, who are attempting to get into institutions.”

While philanthropists haven’t been physically targeted in the United States, they have dealt with threats online, Andrés Spokoiny, president and CEO of the Jewish Funders Network, told eJP. Although he’s not aware of any philanthropists using increased security, “It is getting worrisome, and I think there is a case to be made that law enforcement needs to take this very seriously.”

So far, online threats have not swayed funders from backing initiatives, he said.

One major change in where the threats are coming from is that they are often politically to the left, Spokoiny said. While the antisemitic far right still presents a major threat to the Jewish community — indeed the deadliest attack on Jews in the United States was carried out by an anti-immigration white nationalist — support for political violence is now becoming increasingly commonplace on the far left as well.

“It was always assumed that the far left was antisemitic more in an ideological discourse,” Spokoiny said. “They were looking for cultural influence, and the far right was violent, they would do shootings, they would do that kind of stuff. Now that equation has changed. We know that the anti-Zionist far left can and has become violent as well.”

The first step for keeping Jewish leaders safe is the same step recommended for keeping all Jews safe, Masters said: training on situational awareness and countering active threats.

In the instance of the UnitedHealthcare CEO in Midtown Manhattan, he “was murdered while walking down the street,” Masters said. “So unless we’re going to assume that someone’s going to have 24/7 security, all of us probably, at some point or another, walk down a street, whether we’re walking to shul or we’re picking up our kids from something or hanging out with friends, going out to dinner. This is a role for situational awareness.”

There are easy everyday fixes to security threats that everyone should think about, which includes security on houses, but also not posting about vacations online or having vanity license plates that draw attention to you. Synagogues shouldn’t list names on reserved parking slots, he said, and individuals should think through who they are giving their personal information to and consider getting a P.O. box for junk mail.

“Denial [of the increased threats] is not a strategy,” Masters said. “Proactive is different than paranoid.”

If a serious threat is made to a leader, institutions should contact the police and Jewish security professionals, who are often employed by local Jewish federations, he said. “There’s no one-size-fits-all [to how to protect an individual.] You need to look at the threats that are being made against them, what is reasonable under the circumstances, and then develop a security plan for that individual or for the institution they represent that makes sense and aligns with the resources that the institution has.”

For Ilana Kaufman, CEO of the Jews of Color Initiative, who spoke at the Capital Jewish Museum for the opening plenary of the 2025 Jewish Council for Public Affairs summit days after the terror attack, fearing for her safety isn’t new. “My father and all of my uncles served in the military and grew up in the segregated South, and I’ve never lived in a time where I didn’t realize I was under threat in some way,” she said. Her staff, who are “mostly of color, mostly queer and all Jewish… all know something about being targeted long before Trump or Oct. 7,” Kaufman added. 

While she has employed personal security off-and-on since she was public affairs and civic engagement director at the Jewish Community Relations Council East Bay from 2015 to 2017, Kaufman stressed the need to address the underlying issues contributing to the violent culture. “What’s going to prevent the violence, it’s not arming people,” she said. “Why don’t we flood our community with the resources people need to be well and maybe also decrease and deflate some of that tension out there and try to reorient some of that rage.”

Leadership for Impact’s Lewis hopes this High Holy Day season, synagogues have a different kind of appeal, one that is not financial, but simply acknowledges that these threats need to be taken seriously. “I don’t want us to be victimized as a community by a failure of imagination,” he said. “We may choose to go in one way in one community and another in another, but we’ve got to be talking about this, and it’s not just about security cameras in shuls.”