Two Milwaukee-area synagogues have called police to investigate suspicious packages, JTA reports.
One of the synagogues also received a threatening voicemail on Monday morning, according to the report.
Congregation Shalom in Fox Point, Wisconsin, was concerned about a white powdery substance covering a package it received on Monday. The substance was determined to be packing material, according to the report.
The Shul in Bayside received a package on Monday that it was not expecting. The US Postal Inspection Service called Amazon to determine what was in the package, which turned out to have been ordered by the congregation.
Neither synagogue was aware of the other’s package scare.
The Shul’s threatening voicemail remains under investigation, according to the report.
The Milwaukee Jewish Federation in a statement praised “our law enforcement partners who responded promptly and continue to work tirelessly to keep our community safe.”
Earlier this year, a 33-year-old Wisconsin man was sentenced to three years in prison for writing threatening letters to the Jewish Community Center in Whitefish Bay.
The letters written by the man, Chadwick Grubbs, caused the JCC to close multiple times after three threats in May 2018.
Grubbs was charged in September of 2018. He pleaded guilty in November 2018 to two counts of mailing threatening communications and one count of threatening to injure and destroy property by fire and an explosive.
The threatening letters stated that Grubbs was going to use guns to cause "maximum carnage" and explosives. Numbers and symbols associated with white supremacist ideology were used in the letters.