A recent spate of apparent hate crimes not far from Bergen County have a disturbing common denominator: None of them, in fact, may have been hate crimes in the classic sense. It should be noted that these crimes also appear unrelated to the recent spate of incidents directed at area synagogues.

On Nov. 9, the anniversary of Kristallnacht, cars were set on fire and anti-Semitic graffiti was sprayed on park benches in the heavily Jewish Midwood neighborhood of Brooklyn.

Agnes Adler is a little pixie of a thing with a musical Hungarian accent. As she and her husband David walk into a room, she tells him to smile, to say hello, not to be a grump, and he lovingly responds, “Yes, Mammi, whatever you say.” He is wont to stay in the background, however, as an invisible flying buttress, supporting her in artistic endeavors and much more, while also creating his own massive sculptures.

David stands a full head taller than his wife, continues to smile the smile of the gentlemen chauvinists of his generation. He and Aggie love to sharpen their blades on their wit and humor. She complains, “I have to do everything and he expects me to wait on him hand and foot. Men! Impossible!”

The Republican candidates for president seem to be trying to outdo themselves in letting Jewish voters know that they are the best candidates for anyone who cares about Israel and its security. President Barack Obama and his supporters, meanwhile, seek to make the case that he is Israel’s true friend.

One candidate, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, said that he would move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv if elected. Not to be outdone, Rep. Michelle Bachman said she would do so almost the moment she sets foot in the Oval Office for the first time. In fact, she said, “I already have secured a donor who said they will personally pay for the ambassador’s home to be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.”

To hear his opponents tell it, President Barack Obama is the worst president ever when it comes to things Israel.

To hear his supporters and Obama himself, the president is the best president ever when it comes to Israel.

The record supports Obama more than it does his detractors. On paper and by all practical measures, the president certainly is among the best friends Israel has had in the White House. Yet Obama and his aides have managed to say and do things that cause serious doubt even among those who want to believe him.

Last month, the Republican presidential candidates convened in a Washington ballroom to lay out their case that President Barack Obama has been bad for Israel — and, by extension, bad for the Jews.

David Axelrod is still perplexed by how hard it was to sell his man to Jewish voters last time around. “We had to work for that vote,” he said just before Thanksgiving, during an interview in the empty conference room he uses at President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign headquarters in Chicago’s Loop. “There was sort of, you know, ‘Where’s he coming from?’”

When it comes to the Jewish vote, candidates of every party focus on one issue: Israel. As they see it, Jewish voters care about Israel more than they do such bread-and-butter issues as the economy, health care, energy, environment, and social security.

According to the annual American Jewish Committee survey of Jewish public opinion, however, the candidates are of the mark. Year after year, the AJC surveys consistently show that Jewish voters put those very issues ahead of Israel, which this year came in fifth in importance.

In a campaign in which image has taken on an outsized importance, President Barack Obama must overcome an unusually thorny political problem: the image of President Bill Clinton, specifically of a teary-eyed Clinton wearing a kippah and ending his eulogy for the assassinated israel Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin with two Hebrew words that are now forever tied to the two men, “Shalom, chaver” — goodbye, my friend.