In 2025, the American Jewish community experienced the arson attack on Gov. Josh Shapiro at the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion; the Capital Jewish Museum shooting in Washington, D.C.; and the Run for Their Lives attack in Boulder, Colorado.
Yet despite these high-profile, violent incidents, antisemitic attacks went down across the country last year, according to the Anti-Defamation League. The same held true in Pennsylvania.
Nationally, the ADL’s annual audit counted 6,274 incidents, down from a record of 9,354 in 2024. In the Commonwealth, the ADL reported 281 incidents, down from 465 a year earlier, a 40% decrease. Both 2025 numbers are still the third-highest totals since the ADL began its annual audit in 1979. The audit tracks “both criminal and non-criminal acts of harassment, vandalism and assault against individuals and groups as reported to ADL by victims, law enforcement, the media and partner organizations and evaluated by ADL’s experts,” according to a press release on this year’s numbers.
“There is positive news,” said Andrew Goretsky, the senior regional director of the ADL’s Philadelphia office. “We can welcome a healthy sign of improvement and hope that this is just the beginning of a downward trend, but we can’t take this as a sigh of relief.”
In both Pennsylvania and across the country, the ADL attributed a significant percentage of the decrease to the improving situation on campuses. The number of incidents on college and university campuses fell from 1,654 in 2024 to 583 a year ago, a drop of 66%, according to the press release. In the state, that number decreased from 90 in 2024 to 57 in 2025.
Goretsky said some of the factors involved in the drop were bigger than ADL advocacy: The encampment movement didn’t return in 2025. The Gaza war also entered a ceasefire and negotiations for a peaceful, long-term settlement. But the regional director also said that the ADL’s work with campus leaders made a difference. In 2025, the ADL released its third-ever Campus Antisemitism Report Card, which graded schools on their responses to antisemitism.
“ADL’s sustained engagement with universities across Pennsylvania and the implementation of the Campus Antisemitism Report Card have contributed to measurable improvements in institutional responses to antisemitism,” stated the press release. “The significant reduction in campus incidents reflects both ADL’s advocacy work and increased accountability measures at colleges and universities statewide.”
In the release, the ADL pointed to the Wissahickon School District as a positive example of this work. Though it’s not a college or university, the K-12 public school district experienced a series of antisemitic incidents between 2023 and 2025. One involved an assistant principal referring to a school family’s summer camp as “Jew camp” and the family’s money as “Jew money” after failing to hang up the phone with a member of that family.
Following these incidents, the ADL worked with the district to implement staff training on antisemitism and Jewish identity and processes for addressing bias incidents. It also organized in-person conversations between Jewish parents and district officials.
But such an approach doesn’t always work. After a series of similar incidents in the School District of Philadelphia, for example, the ADL found the district to be less than responsive. It responded by filing a Title VI complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.
“Some school districts are more responsive than others. This is why a holistic approach needs to happen,” Goretsky said. “When we weren’t seeing progress in the Philadelphia school district, we filed a Title VI complaint.”
As Goretsky explained, incidents are down, but they aren’t at zero. They are also still way higher than they were in 2015, around the time that antisemitic incidents started to rise nationwide. There is more work to do, and it takes a variety of approaches to do that work.
The ADL is working to turn the 2025 decrease into a trend for 2026. While antisemitism must be fought on a case-by-case basis, there are also general strategies that the organization is applying. Across the country, for example, it is advocating for the type of buffer-zone legislation that has gained traction in New York and California. This would prevent protesters from gathering within certain distances of synagogues, churches and mosques.
“Somebody should be able to go into a synagogue, go into a church, go into a mosque, without being harassed on the way in,” Goretsky said.
The ADL is also working with companies to launch employee resource groups for Jewish employees, with social media companies to create and enforce policies relating to hate speech on their platforms, and with states to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism. That definition makes a clear distinction between criticism of Israel and Israel-related antisemitism, such as holding Jews collectively responsible for Israel’s actions and denying the right of self-determination for Jews.
“As an example, slightly fewer than half of anti-Israel rallies assessed by ADL contained antisemitic content that qualified to be counted within this Audit,” the release stated.