You probably remember the horror film, When A Stranger Calls. It was made in 1979.

Threatening phone calls come to a home. The police try to discern the source of the calls.

These are the words of Sgt. Sacker: “Jill, this is Sergeant Sacker. Listen to me. We’ve traced the call… it’s coming from inside the house. Now a squad car’s coming over there right now — just get out of that house!”

That is what happened to the American Jewish community.

More than half of all Jewish community centers in this country have gotten bomb threats – in each case resulting in evacuations. JCCs and synagogues have had to expend huge amounts of effort and money on increasing their security.

Apparently, those phone calls emanated from a young American Israeli, living in Ashkelon. He targeted institutions not only in the United States, but in Australia and New Zealand as well. Apparently, this young man has been suffering from a mental illness that has been at least partially responsible for his actions.

So, to quote Sgt. Sacker: the call has come from inside the house – from within the household of the Jewish people itself.

In the wake of learning this news, a kind of collective nausea has grabbed our souls.

For those who think in Yiddish – we feel a sense of shande, shame, that this could have emanated from one of our own.

So, what do we Jews – now do, and think, and say?

First: let us think about the young man who supposed did this.

The Talmud contains a very important teaching about how we deal with people who act because they have no choice about how to act: ones rachmana patrei – if someone acts out of compulsion, we must show compassion – rachmana, rachamim, rachmanut – in Yiddish, rachmonis.

I suspect that it might be very hard to prove legal insanity — when we consider that this young man planned and premeditated a technologically sophisticated campaign against over 100 Jewish institutions.

Which, of course, offer us an even more perplexing problem: What is it, within the inner life of a young Jew, that would drive him to do such a thing?

Second: Let us think about us – we American Jews – and what this country has been experiencing.

Here, I turn to a statement that came from the American Jewish Committee: “This is a lesson in not leaping to assumptions about complex links between polarizing politics and anti-Semitic acts. But it does not dispel the age-old reality of anti-Semitism.”

The threats were real, and they mattered. Those threats made us doubt the security of the institutions that give life to the Jewish community. Those threats threatened to keep Jews away from those institutions.

These are the words of David Schraub, writing in Tablet:

I don’t yet know why the man who did this, did what he did. But I have no agony whatsoever saying: he is an anti-Semite.

If he did this because he thought American Jews were soft, liberal, beholden to leftist ideology and insufficiently “pro-Israel,” he is an anti-Semite.

If he did this because he wanted to discredit Donald Trump and the American political right, he is an anti-Semite who also did a grave injustice to President Trump and his supporters.

And if he was so mentally ill that he had no coherent motive that can be discerned at all, he is a mentally ill anti-Semite.

I play no favorites when it comes to anti-Semitism; it is equally despicable no matter who the perpetrator is. Nor do I apologize for declaring that these were anti-Semitic attacks, because they were anti-Semitic attacks.

They just happened also to be acts of betrayal as well.

But:

The actions of a disturbed young man do not explain the attacks on Jewish cemeteries; on Jewish journalists; do not explain the rise of the alt-right, and its espousal of white supremacy.

Neither do those actions explain the rise of anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism on the Left.

Do not let this latest news about the JCC threats distract us.

The hatred in this country is still real.

Third: while the hatred is real, it is also a distraction that saps our energy, and thwarts our purpose.

It is not that people hate us.

It is that God loves us so much, that God gave us the Torah, to share with the world, to do the mitzvot, and to bring the world closer to the ultimate rule of God.

Soo, we will be preparing for Pesach.

The final plague was the death of the first born. The mashchit, the destructive angel, went forth and killed the first born of Egypt. In order to prevent that plague of death from entering our own homes, we had to sacrifice the lamb, and place blood on our doorposts.

Is it possible that this angel could not tell the difference between an Egyptian home and a Jewish home?

My interpretation: In difficult times, we must make sure that the destructive spirit, of spiritual exhaustion, of fear – not lavo el bateichem, not enter our spiritual homes, the homes of the Jewish community, the places where the Jewish spirit lives – to destroy us, and to destroy our souls.

We still have work to do.