The Rabbi Jacob Joseph Yeshiva in Edison was the target of vandals sometime between July 11 and 13.
Photo by Debra Rubin
July 22, 2008
Edison Police and the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s office are investigating a graffiti attack on an Edison yeshiva as a bias incident.
No suspects have been apprehended in the incident at Rabbi Jacob Joseph Yeshiva, where obscene and anti-Semitic graffiti was found scrawled on interior walls.
The attack occurred sometime over the July 11-13 weekend between 6 p.m. Friday and 4 p.m. Sunday, according to Edison Police Lt. Joseph Shannon. He said the incident was discovered Sunday by a 19-year-old student at the school, which is located on Woodbridge Avenue at the intersection of Plainfield Avenue.
Vandals apparently gained entrance to the school through an unlocked door and went up a flight of stairs where they wrote the word “Jesus” in black and green marker on the stairwell walls, said Shannon.
Going up another flight of stairs, they drew a two-foot by two-foot swastika on the wall of the stairwell in green marker and drew another, three-foot by three-foot, in green on an interior hallway. On the interior wall near a classroom, a two-foot by three-foot penis was drawn in black marker. Shannon said the school quickly painted over the graffiti.
“It’s a little vandalism and we’re not happy about it, but the Edison Police are cooperating,” said school executive director Rabbi Yitzchok Weintraub. “We hope when they catch the suspects they are taught a lesson, whatever it takes. Maybe they should watch a few Holocaust movies or something like that. We’re not particularly shook up. We are certainly not putting as much stock in this as some.”
Shannon said as a result of the incident, Edison police have placed the school under “selective enforcement.”
“We’ve assigned extra patrols and are having targeted patrols through that area,” he said, adding he was unaware of any other incidents at the school.
Sgt. John Rodriguez, chief investigator with the bias crimes unit of the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office, said his office checked the scene.
“We just hope someone saw something and can lead us in the right direction to any suspects,” said Rodriguez. “To my knowledge, there has never been another incident there and I have been doing this 11 years.”
However, a group of students and a staffer outside the school told NJJN on July 15 they often are taunted with anti-Semitic slurs by neighborhood youths.
“It happens all the time when you stand on the corner,” said one boy.
The all-male Orthodox school, which has about 75 students and includes dorms, has students high school age through post-high school, many engaged in advanced Jewish study.
The students and educators wear black suits, white shirts, and often the distinctive fedora hats of the fervently observant.
Originally established on Manhattan’s Lower East Side in 1903, it moved to Staten Island in 1976, where it maintains boys’ and girls’ campuses. The Edison branch opened in 1982.
The staffer, who declined to give his name or title, said he had seen the increased police patrols, but that when he told a police officer a group of neighborhood youths walking near the school made him feel uncomfortable, the officer assured him “it was only some kids walking by.”
“I later found out those same kids had been harassing our boys last Wednesday,” said the staffer.
He also said a student, not the administration, had called the police about the vandalism. He said there were other unreported incidents in the past, although he did not elaborate.
The vandalism did, however, alarm others in the larger Jewish community.
“Of course the JCRC and federation are concerned and very distressed by this,” said Gabriela Sadote Sleppin, director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Jewish Federation of Greater Middlesex County, “especially since the JCRC makes it a point to reach out to other faith-based and ethnic communities in order to fill in the gaps in knowledge and ignorance such as this and to support anti-hate and anti-bias legislation.”
Sleppin said she had immediately contacted Weintraub to offer support and had been in contact with law enforcement.
“We have complete faith in the police,” she said. “This just goes to show we have to remain vigilant at all times.”
Etzion Neuer, New Jersey regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, termed the vandalism “a senseless act.”
Those with information about the vandalism should call Edison Det. Salvatore Capriglione at 732-248-7540.
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