Chabad shul in Mineola defaced

By Mayer Fertig Issue of July 10, 2009 / 18 Tammuz 5769 The young maintenance worker from Brazil didn’t know what a swastika was. She called Rabbi Anchelle Perl on Friday morning wondering about the freshly painted images on the front doors of Cong. Beth Sholom Chabad in Mineola: were they religious symbols? But most everyone else who passed the shul Friday morning knew just what he or she was looking at. “People were aghast. Screaming. People were driving by and taking pictures,” Rabbi Perl recalled. “The general feeling was one of disgust and disgrace.” “Based on what was written there, obviously, it’s being investigated as a hate crime and hopefully we’ll be able to identify somebody who was responsible,” Detective Sergeant Gary Shapiro, the coordinator of the NCPD bias crimes unit, said in a brief telephone interview. The swastikas were spray painted on the shul sometime Thursday night. Police believe that a separate incident — obscenities drawn on cars in the same area — was not connected. A neighbor’s home security camera captured video images of children carrying out those crimes. The swastikas, painted in red, were drawn “incorrectly, I might add,” noted Detective Lieutenant Ray Cote, commanding officer of the Nassau County Police Department’s Third Precinct, at a news conference at department headquarters in Mineola. “Certainly it’s stupid,” he said, “but we treat this very seriously.” “They sent a crime unit, scraping the paint, looking for fingerprints. That was reassuring,” Rabbi Perl said. “What went through my mind was, in 1938 the government [of Germany] sponsored this. And now, within minutes, the mayor of Mineola called. The commissioner of police [Lawrence Mulvey] was jogging — he’s a friend — he heard it and came around the block to reassure us. It was good to see the government people,” he added. In an odd twist, had the crime occurred just a few days later, the perpetrators would in all likelihood also have been caught on tape. “Even as I speak to you, the cameras are going up,” Rabbi Perl said. The wiring was installed last Wednesday and Thursday as part of a planned security upgrade, and by Tuesday cameras were up “around the whole building.” “We would have caught them easily,” said Rabbi Perl, but “there’s no such thing as irony in this world. It’s all divine providence and we’re accepting it that way.”

The Nassau County Police Department is seeking the public’s help. Anyone with information should call Crime Stoppers at 800-244-TIPS. - Additional reporting by Andrew Hackmack