The New Blood Libel

A synagogue built in 1963 in northern Toronto welcomed congregants through large picture windows. On March 2, 2026, a car arrived at night and a shooter fired about 20 shots at the synagogue’s glass windows. Surveillance footage did not capture identifying details, but showed the shooter’s outward calm. Bullets shattered nine panes and damaged the wooden framework. Two months later, the windows remain boarded, and leaders face the challenge of fortifying the synagogue against renewed violence targeting Jews. The situation is framed alongside rising anti-Semitic violence in the Western world and the role of anti-Jewish incitement rooted in long-standing myths.

"On the night of March 2, 2026, at about 10:45 p.m., a car pulled into the synagogue's driveway. A person stepped out of the passenger side and aimed a handgun at the synagogue's glass windows. According to the synagogue's rabbi, Debra Landsberg, surveillance video did not capture the faces of the shooter or driver, or the car's license plate. It caught instead something less practical but more telling: the shooter's outward calm. This person emptied the gun, paused, then resumed firing, 20 shots in all. The bullets shattered nine panes of glass, their wooden framework gouged by bullet fragments."

"Two months later, the synagogue's windows remain boarded over. The synagogue's rabbi, board, and other decision makers are pondering a new and difficult dilemma: how to fortify their house of worship against a world where Jews are again marked for violence by their neighbors."

"Light streamed into the lobby through large picture windows. The congregants gazed out at the world through undraped glass, confident and hopeful. They invited the world to gaze back in."

"Anti-Semitic violence in the Western world is quickening in tempo and intensifying in lethality. Much of that violence can be blamed on anti-Jewish incitement that draws on the deepest foundations of anti-Jewish myth."

Read at The Atlantic