The year 2000 carries a futuristic, even exotic ring, representing not only the end of a century -- a once-in-a-lifetime event for most people -- but the end of ten centuries: a millennium. On a mundane, perhaps frivolous level, restaurants and nightclubs have been inundated with reservations for New Year's Eve 1999. Hundreds of millions of people in the United States and around the world will experience a certain sense of drama or exhilaration when all four numerals marking the year advance at the same time, as if the passing of a thousand years were encapsulated before their eyes in a single moment.

For many millions of Christians in particular, the turning of the millennium carries special significance. The modern Western world's ostensibly secular calendar is, in effect, a means of counting the years since the birth of Jesus, as originally calculated by the Church in the 6th century. Indeed, because of adjustments made centuries later to correct certain prior miscalculations, the year 2000 actually comes 2004 years after Jesus' birth; the religious millennium in that sense already occurred no later than 1996. For all practical purposes, however, midnight of December 31, 1999, remains the point of universal anticipation.

But there is a big difference between, on the one hand, the celebratory, good-natured fascination of the average person with that special moment -- which presumably will be followed by a return to familiar preoccupation with the daily demands of more ordinary experience -- and, on the other, the profound spiritual intensity, the sense of approaching apocalypse which, for millions of believers, encompasses the coming millennium. Many of the latter are seriously preparing for the "End Times" and the Biblically ordained, world-shattering, miraculous events they portend.

For the most part, these "true believers" are not the focus of this report. Rather, the Anti-Defamation League is examining the response to the approaching millennium among violence-prone political extremists, anti-government militia and self-styled "Patriot" groups, and certain religious fundamentalists whose apocalyptic expectations of the event include a view of Jews as playing a conspiratorial or even Satanic role.

It is important to distinguish between the theological and the technological aspects of this subject. Besides the religiously oriented concerns of certain sects posed by the advent of the third millennium, the potential computer problem symbolized by the term "Y2K" (or, "year 2000") is the subject of anxious speculation among the general public, the scientific and business communities, government officials and the news media, as well as by far-right extremists. There is legitimate concern over possible widespread mechanical malfunction, and the chaotic and perilous confusion that might ensue, if millions of home, industrial, governmental and organizational computers misread the crucial electronic "00" symbol intended to designate the year 2000, mistaking it for "1900" (since virtually all computers have been programmed to use the last two digits of any given 20th century year as a "shorthand" reference to that year). Indeed, the U.S. State Department recently published a country-by-country set of "Y2K" warnings for Americans doing business in 194 nations. According to CNN, the document will advise American travelers who "could be affected by power outages, water shortages and other potentially serious problems if computers are unable to recognize the four-digit date 2000 on Jan. 1."

At the same time, many computer industry and other technicians and programmers, having devoted intensive attention to this problem -- popularly known as the "Y2K bug" -- now claim to have overcome it. And some newly developed computers, manufactured after a certain date, may avoid it. Yet the issue, and the alarm it has generated, lingers.

Thus, the theological implications of the new millennium and the technological challenges of the Y2K "bug," broad-ranging, disparate matters born of the same chronological moment, approach each other at a unique historical crossroads. The existential significance of these events is beyond ADL's purview. The League is concerned about the paranoid overreaction to them by a variety of bigots and extremists, who are exploiting them to spread vicious, hysterical propaganda of hatred, scapegoating and possible violence. That is the subject of the following report.