(JTA) — Three Los Angeles synagogue locations were temporarily closed after receiving bomb threats on Shabbat.
The threats were reported Saturday in the Los Angeles Jewish Journal. The police used bomb-sniffing dogs to check the buildings for explosives and none were found.
The affected synagogues were the University Synagogue in Brentwood, and both campuses of the Wilshire Boulevard Temple: the Erika J. Glazer Family Campus in Wilshire Center/Koreatown and the Audrey and Sydney Irmas Campus in West Los Angeles.
The synagogues were all closed at around 8 a.m. Saturday and cleared to reopen by about 12:45 p.m., Officer Mike Lopez of the Los Angeles Police Department told the Jewish Journal. All three buildings were empty when the threats were received.
The University Synagogue received its threat in an email, according to the report. The Wilshire Boulevard Temple received a threat via an online submission form on the synagogue’s website.
Members of a Torah study group at the University Synagogue moved their session about a block down the street and held it outside.
The bomb threats come some three months after an Israeli-American Jewish teenager was arrested at his home in Ashkelon in southern Israel and charged with makings hundreds of threats to Jewish institutions around the world, including more than 160 to JCCs, synagogues and Jewish organizations in the United States.
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