Cherry Hill JCC gets second bomb threat in two days

For the second consecutive day, the Katz Jewish Community Center in Cherry Hill Township was the target of a bomb threat Wednesday morning, the center said.

The building was evacuated safely, as it had been the day before, the Jewish Federation of Southern New Jersey said in a statement, and reopened at 1 p.m. The center cited other “reported incidents” at Jewish institutions in Philadelphia and New York, but details were unavailable.

The threat arrived via a messaging app at about 7 a.m., said Cherry Hill Township Police Chief Robert Kempf, and it came as township police were investigating Tuesday’s bomb scare, which came at 8:40 a.m.

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In a joint statement Tuesday, Cherry Hill officials and the township’s Human Relations Advisory Committee, called the bomb scare “reprehensible” and “shocking.”

The statement said, “It is a somber reminder of the very real threat of antisemitism that we must continue to fight on all fronts.”

Police and the FBI are trying to track down the source of the threats, Kempf said, but these days bomb-threat investigations are complicated by technology. “There’s just so many ways to hide where you’re calling from.” It’s possible that it could have come from someone out of the country, he added.

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While the source of most bomb scares is a “crank call,” he said, “you can never take it lightly. We are not giving up.”