By Joel Magalnick, Editor, JTNews
What struck Rabbi Bernie Fox as more notable than the actual finding of anti-Semitic graffiti all over the outer walls and windows of his school was the response that came after.
“These are a few foolish young people that were compelled to express their anger and hatred, yet the response was hundreds of people stood up and said we won’t tolerate this,” said Fox, head of school at the Northwest Yeshiva High School.
NYHS was vandalized in the early morning hours of Fri., Sept. 17, as security tapes showed. School families, members of Congregation Shevet Achim, which holds services in the building, neighbors and community members came out in force to scrape and paint over the swastikas and epithets that had been painted all over the building and across its windows.
“Our immediate objective was to make sure that when Shevet Achim came in on Friday afternoon and evening for Yom Kippur services, that its membership would not be accosted by the appearance,” Fox said.
Students did not have classes that day, and most understood that the vandalism “was the callous behavior of a few foolish young people,” he said.
Joe Fischer, Shevet Achim’s board president, said in a statement thanking Rabbi Fox and the volunteers who did the cleanup that his congregation was “touched by the outpouring of support demonstrated by our fellow Mercer Islanders who expressed their outrage at the incident.”
In a letter Fox sent out to students’ families and school supporters on Sept. 21, he too thanked each of the volunteer helpers, whom he listed by name on the school’s Web site.
“These friends were not called or solicited for their assistance,” he wrote. “Through word-of-mouth, they heard about the vandalism and their own goodness compelled them to come.”
The morning after the vandalism occurred, drivers on Island Crest Way, Mercer Island’s main north-south thoroughfare, came across approximately 30 people holding signs condemning the acts and in support of NYHS. The gathering was assembled by Mercer Island resident Rebecca Warriner, who said she was outraged when she heard about the attacks. She gathered friends and other island residents via Facebook and demonstrated while much of the Jewish population on the island was at synagogue for Yom Kippur.
NYHS is located along Island Crest Way, though the building is elevated from the road in an otherwise residential area. But Fox said the vandals knew what they were doing.
“They basically covered all the windows on the beis midrash [library],” he said. “They knew that was the one place they could put up these symbols of hatred and they would be clearly visible from the inside.”
The beit midrash has a bank of windows across the room, which is where Shevet Achim holds its services. Fox said he didn’t believe the vandals knew the significance of the room, just that it would get their message to the people inside, had the graffiti not been removed.
Several of Shevet Achim’s members are Holocaust survivors, Fox said, who could have seen this event as one similar to what they experienced in Europe then.
“Experiences like this were the harbingers of much worse disasters and tragedies to come. They come to the United States, they feel that they are now safe, they live in a country in which there are religious freedoms,” he said. “Here they see something like this on their synagogue… [and] we understand what the probable impact this is on them.”
Fox, whose own father survived the Holocaust, wondered if the people who had painted the swastikas understood that impact.
“That’s really the sad part, I think,” he said. “The thoughtlessness.”
NYHS was not the only building attacked. On the same day, police were notified of similar graffiti at St. Monica’s Church and on a nearby van, and three days earlier vandals attacked Island Park Elementary School. Police believe all three are related.
According to Det. Pete Erickson of the Mercer Island Police Department, they have some leads in the cases, and have turned to the CrimeStoppers network as well.
Fox said NYHS still needed to assess costs to repaint the building, which will be necessary to bring it to its previous condition, and whether insurance would cover the repainting. Amy Wasser-Simpson, Vice President for Planning & Community Services at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle, said that while building painting is generally not an item that would be covered by a grant from the Federation’s Emergency Capital Needs fund, a case could be made to the committee approving the grants due to the nature of the request, should NYHS choose to go in that direction.
The school sustained no other damage.
According to Kim Greenhall, who facilitates the SAFE Washington notification network for Jewish agencies, she was alerted to the presence of the vandalism that morning.
“We then sent out an alert to all the Jewish agencies through our communications network,” she said, with a message of “Something happened, because it’s High Holidays, make sure that you’re being really careful, that you’re really looking out, that your cameras are on, that your systems are working.”
No other incidents occurred at Seattle-area Jewish organizations over the holiday. However, in Walla Walla, a community “heritage wall” in the center of town, which includes an image of a Torah and a yad, the hand-pointer to guide Torah readers, was vandalized on Yom Kippur day. What turned out to be wet toilet paper was thrown at the Torah image, and a swastika was burned into the grass.
Congregation Beth Israel, the city’s one synagogue, will hold a community gathering at the heritage wall on Oct. 2, according to board president Noah Leavitt.
Two synagogues in Seattle’s Seward Park Neighborhood, Bikur Cholim-Machzikay Hadath and Sephardic Bikur Holim, were vandalized with swastikas at Rosh Hashanah last year. No arrests were made and Seattle Police closed the case after exhausting their leads.