Love and hate in Bergen County
Police: Graffiti in Fair Lawn, Glen Rock ‘isolated incidents’
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PrintAs police continue to investigate an escalating series of attacks on area synagogues, which reached new urgency following last week’s firebombing of a Rutherford synagogue, they are also addressing a recent string of anti-Semitic graffiti incidents in area parks. They do not see a link between the two, however.
The Fair Lawn Police Department responded Friday, Jan. 13, to a call about graffiti in Beaver Dam Park, where an employee earlier that morning discovered three swastikas and an anarchy symbol spray-painted on a basketball court and shed. On Jan. 1, the Bergen County Police Department (BCPD) responded to a call in the Fair Lawn section of Dunkerhook County Park where three swastikas were discovered inside a Porta-John. Later that day, the police department received a second call about two swastikas and hateful slogans discovered on a storm drain in the Glen Rock section of Dunkerhook.
“It looks like this is probably all the work of the same person,” said Detective-Sgt. Gabriel Escobar of the BCPD.
The department is working with the Fair Lawn Police Department, he said, and has developed a possible suspect, but he would not comment further. He did not, he said, see a link between the graffiti and the recent spate of anti-Semitic attacks against synagogues in the county.
“This is more or less an isolated incident,” he said. “It looks like the other ones might be of a different nature, more organized.”
In response to the attacks on shuls in Rutherford, Paramus, Hackensack, and Maywood, the BCPD has increased its patrols of all of the county’s synagogues, Escobar said. He urged worshippers to be alert. In particular, he said, people should be watchful for anybody they do not recognize, particularly during times when the building is not in use.
“Just be vigilant,” he said.
More on: Love and hate in Bergen County
Synagogues take control of their own security
Neighborhood watch organizations are nothing new, but a group of security professionals five years ago decided to localize the idea even more by creating Community Security Service, a volunteer organization that trains members of Jewish organizations in vigilance.
“Law enforcement can’t do everything on their own and we have the ability to help them,” said Joshua Glice, CSS’s director of synagogue and school operations . “It’s very important that the community try to help. Nobody will know the members of a congregation as well as the congregants themselves.”
An interview with Rabbi Nosson Schuman
A few minutes of hate give way to many days of love and support
On Monday, Rabbi Nosson Schuman went shopping with his wife to buy new sheets to replace the ones scorched by a Molotov cocktail thrown through their bedroom window just before dawn on Jan. 11.
That night, he had planned to kick off a new adult-ed class on prayer in Congregation Beth El of Rutherford, the small synagogue that shares the house where he and his family have lived since August 2009. Instead, the congregants gathered to discuss the incident, which police are still puzzling over.
Beth El website raises funds, awareness for security
In the wake of last week’s attack on a Rutherford synagogue, social media is helping create a new sense of security there.
Adam Wolf, a West Orange resident who works in real estate, grew up in Rutherford and his parents live two blocks from Temple Beth El, the site of last week’s firebombing. When he heard about the attack, Wolf wanted to do something to help, and the result has been a viral campaign through e-mail, Facebook, and Twitter to raise money for the shul’s security upgrades.
Communal meeting, interfaith gathering follow in Rutherford bombing’s wake
With the Jewish communities of Bergen County on heightened alert, some 200 religious and community leaders gathered on Jan. 12 to discuss the recent string of anti-Semitic incidents in the county with law enforcement and government officials.
The meeting followed by one day the most recent, and most serious, attack — a firebombing that could have claimed the lives of eight people. The incident targeted the old Queen Anne building in Rutherford that houses Orthodox Congregation Beth El, as well as the home of its rabbi and his family. Five of the eight potential victims were children.
