By Rebecca Szlechter, Menachem Wecker, JNS
The state’s data “affirms what we already know as members of the Jewish community, that we are in the midst of an ongoing and unprecedented experience of being targeted as Jews,” Jeremy Burton, CEO of the local JCRC, told JNS.
Of the 114 hate crimes in Massachusetts in 2025 that were based on religious bias, 95 incidents, or 83.3%, targeted Jews. Muslims were targeted in 10 incidents, or 8.8%, according to a website funded by a U.S. Justice Department grant.
In 2024, 132 (84%) of 157 religion-based hate crimes in the commonwealth targeted Jews and 10 (6.4%) targeted Muslims, and in 2023, 105 (74.5%) of 141 religion-based hate crimes were anti-Jewish and 5 (3.5%) were anti-Muslim, according to the site, to which the Massachusetts Executive Office of Public Safety and Security directs the public to view crime data.
JNS asked the office of Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, a Democrat, last month for 2025 hate crime statistics. “The 2025 data is typically published in the fall after it is reviewed and finalized,” a spokeswoman for Healey told JNS.
In July 2025, the commonwealth said that for the first time in nearly 35 years, there were more recorded anti-Jewish than anti-black hate crimes in Massachusetts in 2024, part of a “troubling” 20.5% increase in antisemitic hate crimes that year.
In 2025, 114 incidents targeted black people, or 20% more than the number of antisemitic hate crimes.
The Pew Research Center's 2023-24 U.S. Religious Landscape Study Interactive Database estimates that about 4% of Massachusetts adults are Jewish and 2% are Muslim. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, about 10.2% of Massachusetts residents are black and another 4% are two or more races.
That means that in 2025 in Massachusetts, a Jew was about 370% likelier to be the victim of a hate crime than a Muslim was, and 112% more likely than a black person to be targeted in a hate crime.
Jeremy Burton, CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston, told JNS that the latest commonwealth hate crime data “affirms what we already know as members of the Jewish community, that we are in the midst of an ongoing and unprecedented experience of being targeted as Jews.”
“Fortunately, here in Massachusetts, our elected and civic leaders are already taking this crisis seriously,” Burton said.
“The Massachusetts Special Commission on Combating Antisemitism did the work of identifying what needs to change,” he told JNS. “We now have a practical roadmap to help schools, workplaces, municipalities and local activists put those recommendations into practice. The next step is implementation, and these numbers make clear why that work cannot wait.”
Melissa Garlick, associate vice president of the Center for Combating Antisemitism at the Combined Jewish Philanthropies, told JNS that “Jewish communities continue to face alarming levels of antisemitism."
"In Massachusetts, we've made addressing this challenge a priority by investing in coordinated community action through CJP's Center for Combating Antisemitism, helping equip leaders, institutions and communities with tools to understand and address antisemitism," she said.
"The Massachusetts Special Commission on Combating Antisemitism gave us a roadmap for building on that work," she added. "The task before us now is implementation so that schools, workplaces, municipalities and civic institutions are better equipped to prevent and respond to anti-Jewish hate."
