Just hours before a Holocaust memorial service at Temple Beth Jacob on Monday evening, a swastika the size of a fist was found scrawled in black on the Redwood City synagogue’s sign.
This was the second anti-Semitic graffiti incident at the Conservative synagogue this year. In February the words “Nazis ya!” and a swastika drawn backward were discovered on the building.
Beth Jacob Rabbi Nathaniel Ezray condemned the graffiti incidents and other hate-related crimes throughout the Bay Area, calling them ongoing examples of “anti-Semitism hitting home.”
“This is a painful reminder that this still exists in the world today — and in our neighborhood,” he said.
The Redwood City Police Department has not yet determined if the two incidents are related and at this point is investigating both incidents as separate hate crimes.
“We haven’t been able to find a link but we’re trying to determine if there is one,” said police detective Rhonda Leipelt.
She also stressed that the small size of the swastika, only four to five inches, does not decrease the significance of the crime.
“What matters is how it affects the folks at the temple,” she said, “and that someone intentionally put it on a synagogue.”
A $5,000 reward, offered jointly by the police and the San Francisco office of the Anti-Defamation League for information leading to the arrest and prosecution of whoever was responsible for the first incident, is still on the table.
Leipelt said it’s not clear yet whether that reward or another one will also be offered for this week’s incident.
Anyone with information is encouraged to call Leipelt at (650) 780-7136.
Despite concern that the synagogue was targeted again, Ezray said he does not want the congregation to lose sight of the “lessons we can learn from it.”
While the swastika was immediately removed, Ezray did address the incident during his opening remarks at the Holocaust memorial service, urging those in attendance not to simmer in anger and fear, but to “respond with activism, education, compassion and vigilance.”
Yom HaShoah, he told them, is a time to ask “many hard questions about God and humanity that leave us emotionally moved.” And in light of the vandalism, as well as the anti-Semitic climate all over the world, “this year [such questions are] especially poignant.”
Following the February incident, Ezray chose to leave the graffiti up for a few days to allow congregants “to see it in person — this way they could give their personal reactions and it would help them overcome” feelings of powerlessness.
He personally took his seventh-grade religious school class to see the graffiti and encouraged the students to talk about what they saw. Then the students wrote individual prayers in which they envisioned “a world without hate stereotypes.”
The congregation also took part in the ADL’s Confronting Anti-Semitism program, in which bar mitzvah-age students and their parents learn about hate crimes aimed at Jews so that they’ll be better prepared when they happen.
Ezray said it is clear to him that the lessons on tolerance are taking hold.
“A lot of kids have talked to me about speaking out when they’ve witnessed acts of bigotry and hatred,” he said. “One seventh-grader shared how a student at his school casually used the word ‘Jew’ in a negative way and that he responded by letting the student know that it was an inappropriate thing to say.”
Jonathan Bernstein, the ADL’s regional director, applauded the congregation for turning these incidents into learning experiences rather than “burying them under the rug.” He urged others who are targeted by anti-Semitism to respond in a similar fashion.
“Most of us in the Jewish community feel pained when we hear about these incidences, but we also need to feel more empowered to respond,” said Bernstein. “We have to find a way to turn this angst into some sort of a productive response that will remind the perpetrators that they’ll be shunned.”
“If we ignore it,” he warned, “it’s going to get worse.”