FBI data suggests “a small, but meaningful decline” in antisemitic hate crimes in the country between 2024 and 2025, but it’s “very unlikely” that the numbers will return to pre-Oct. 7 levels anytime soon, according to Ayal Feinberg, associate professor of political science and antisemitism studies at Gratz College in Jenkintown, Pa.
Antisemitic hate crimes declined from 1,938 incidents in 2024 to 1,528 in 2025, and overall hate crimes declined 7% from 2024 to 2025, per FBI data released in August.
Still, there was the third-highest number of antisemitic hate crimes in 2025 that the bureau has ever recorded, and the number of hate crimes last year was 36% higher than the 1,100 incidents in 2022, the year before Oct. 7.
That year—2022—“itself was considered an extraordinarily bad year at the time,” said Feinberg, director of Gratz’s Center for Holocaust Studies and Human Rights. “I would describe 2025 as kind of a retreat from the post-Oct. 7 peak but certainly not a return to pre-crisis environment.”
National data reflects a similar trendline with hate crimes targeting Muslims before and after the 9/11 terror attacks, according to Feinberg.
“You see a spike, a small decline and then a plateau, and that’s the environment that we’re in now,” he said. “If things follow that trendline, it’s very unlikely that things will ever return, or at least not in the near term, to pre-Oct. 7 levels.”
That’s because “antisemitism is becoming more normalized in this country,” he said.
“Once you’ve engaged in this type of violent behavior and you’ve made that commitment, you’re far more likely to engage in that kind of behavior moving forward,” Feinberg told JNS.
Anti-Jewish incidents in the United States in 2025 “outnumbered hate crimes against every other religion combined,” and they were 7.5 times larger than anti-Muslim hate crimes and 8.6 times larger than anti-Sikh hate crimes, according to Feinberg.
JNS reported that in 2025, a Jewish American was about 190% likelier than a Muslim American to be the target of a hate crime.
“I’m not in any way, shape or form trying to minimize hate targeted at other groups, but just to demonstrate how unusual the concentration of religion-based hate is against Jews,” Feinberg told JNS.
More than half of anti-Jewish offenses in 2025 were in the “destruction, damage or vandalism” category, which is unusual, the scholar said.
“When you look across all the other groups, the average is only about 23%,” he said. “Nearly 31% of all hate-motivated vandalism offenses in this country were anti-Jewish, even though we’re 2% of the population.”
‘Attacks Jewish visibility’
Feinberg thinks that the reason so much of the Jew-hatred involved vandalism and property destruction was because “antisemitism often attacks Jewish visibility as much as it does individual Jews.”
“Individual Jews are not always easy to identify, but their institutions and their symbols are more readily available for potential perpetrators,” he told JNS. “Jewish institutions or homes displaying Jewish symbols pose a much easier target for potential perpetrators.”
In California, nearly three-quarters of religion-based hate crimes targeted Jews, according to a report that the state attorney general’s office released in July.
Those statistics represent a higher proportional rate than the national average, which is about 64%, according to Feinberg.
“One possibility is that California is home to large Jewish populations, including in urban centers that are so often home to these types of incidents,” he told JNS.
An aggregate look at survey data suggests that Jews are changing their behavior on a national basis in response to antisemitism, according to Feinberg.
“We see that Jews are hesitant in some cases about attending Jewish events. They’re more likely to hide their Jewish identity,” he told JNS. “That might be anything from tucking in a Magen David to putting a baseball cap over the kippah to, in casual conversation with colleagues and friends, not mentioning their Jewish identity or their connection to Israel.”
There needs to be more national funding for education about Jew-hatred “in a much more meaningful way,” according to Feinberg.
“We need exponential growth and commitment to meaningful, rigorous education on what actually reduces antisemitism,” he told JNS.
“Being evidence-based in what our responses should be is where we need to go,” he said. “To get there, we need a huge commitment from the Jewish community and our policymakers to fund real research in this space and stop shooting from the hip.”
