For the second time in a week, the Jewish Community Center of Greater Rochester has received a bomb threat and evacuated its building on Edgewood Avenue in Brighton.
The center closed temporarily, but will reopen at 3 p.m. Brighton police are investigating the threat — just as they are the one received by the JCC on Tuesday — and Governor Andrew Cuomo has directed State Police to provide assistance to the Brighton Police Department.
A previously planned rally against anti-Semitism is still on for 3:30 p.m. at Brighton’s Twelve Corners. The demonstration of support for the local Jewish community was originally put together after grave stones were vandalized at Waad Hakolel Cemetery, a Jewish cemetery just off of Lake Road in Charlotte.  That happened at the beginning of the month.
“STRIKE 3, time to turn out,” one of the rally’s organizers posted on its Facebook event page.
Today’s threat comes amidst the Jewish festival of Purim. Â The festival celebrates the salvation of the Jewish people from an ancient Persian emperor’s plot to kill all the Jews in a single day, according to Chabad.org.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This article and headline has been updated to better identify Sunday’s rally.
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This article appears in Mar 8-14, 2017.
“Antisemitism (also spelled anti-Semitism or anti-semitism) is hostility, prejudice, or discrimination against Jews.” The headline and body text use the term like there is an anti-Jewish rally taking place. I got even more alarmed than I was to begin with.
Thank you so much for pointing that out, Chris. You’re right, and we’ve updated the story and the headline to better reflect that the rally was *against* anti-Semitism.