JCC reopens after Sunday's bomb threat

Multiple emails threatening to bomb the Jewish Community Center in Brighton forced the center to evacuate and temporarily close Sunday — for the second time in less than a week.

The community center was one of several targeted across North America in what Gov. Andrew Cuomo called "a despicable and cowardly act." Other centers in Indianapolis, outside Milwaukee, and in Vancouver, British Columbia, also received bomb threats on Sunday. A synagogue in Seattle was reportedly defaced.

"We will find whoever is responsible for this and bring them to justice," Cuomo said.

"This is larger than the town of Brighton," said Brighton Police Chief Mark Henderson in a phone interview.

By mid-afternoon, the Louis S. Wolk Jewish Community Center of Greater Rochester reopened, still doubling as a warming station for anyone left without electricity after Wednesday's destructive windstorm. Those seeking shelter have come from every ZIP code in the Rochester area, Henderson said. The unwavering hospitality drew messages of gratitude from community leaders and residents, who expressed solidarity on social media, and rallied at Twelve Corners.

"They have just given so much to the community," Brighton Town Supervisor Bill Moehle said of the JCC.

State Assembly Majority Leader Joseph Morelle who visited the center Sunday said in a statement, "Under no circumstance will our community allow these cowardly and despicable actions to succeed in their quest to spread hate and undermine our shared values of inclusion and equality."

Local, state and federal authorities are investigating Sunday's threat, along with a similar case early last Tuesday morning as hate crimes; part of a wave of threats and vandalism targeting Jewish facilities nationwide. Earlier this month, vandals toppled headstones at a Jewish cemetery in northwest Rochester.

"It is especially repugnant that this latest act of anti-Semitism took place on Purim, a day that we celebrate the resiliency of the Jewish people," Cuomo said.

The threats came in around 10 a.m. — via email, same as last week, Henderson said, though the quantity of messages this time was greater. He and Arnie Sohinki, the center's executive director, declined to elaborate on whether the messages went to or came from multiple accounts, or whether the messages differed in any way.

More than 300 patrons, including children, had to be evacuated, Sohinki said. State police and Monroe County sheriff  K-9 units were brought in to sweep the 180,000-square-foot facility but, same as last week, found nothing.

In a statement, Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren said the community's "tolerant and generous spirit" — demonstrated by the JCC in opening its doors to storm victims — would not be diminished: "To all who seek to divide us with fear," she said "I can only tell you that your cowardly attempts are utterly failing."

As for the threat coming on a Jewish holiday, and for a second time in a short period, Sohinki said in a phone call: "That it happened today or tomorrow, it doesn't matter. None of us should be seeing this. It's a hate crime. We just have to look at it as we are going to go on as best we can, business as usual."

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Brighton JCC reopens after bomb threat, one of several targeted across US