Last update - 00:00 11/01/2008
Four teens held in U.S. after 499 Jewish graves vandalized
By Shlomo Shamir, Haaretz Correspondent
NEW YORK - Four teens were arrested Thursday in New Jersey as suspects in a massive desecration of a Jewish cemetery.
Thursday's arraignment ended a week of fear and rage in the New Brunswick Jewish community after the 499 toppled headstones were discovered last weekend.
About three-quarters of the gravestones in the Poile Zedek Cemetery had been uprooted and tossed into the paths between the rows, in the largest incident of vandalism in a U.S. Jewish cemetery in modern memory.
No swastikas or anti-Semitic graffiti were painted on the stones in the incident. Poile Zedek is one of the oldest and best-known Jewish cemeteries in New Jersey, operated by two local synagogues - New Brunswick's Poile Zedek and Highland Park's Etz Ahaim. Many headstones in the cemetery mark graves dating back to the 1920s.
"It is still unclear if this is a teenage prank or anti-Semitic vandalism," Congregation Poile Zedek's Rabbi Abraham Mykoff told Haaretz. Etz Ahaim's Rabbi David Bassous concurred that it is still early to reach a conclusion regarding the arrested teens' motives.
However, both rabbis agreed that the arrests cleared the atmosphere of panic in both congregations after estimates that such an extensive desecration of a cemetery could only be the result of an organized, planned action by local anti-Semitic elements.
New Jersey Anti-Defamation League representative Etzion Neuer and local Jewish community leaders Thursday expressed satisfaction with the fast action of the Middlesex County police department. The leaders praised local police who gave the incident high priority. "We will respect the outcome of the police investigation regarding the youths' motives," Neuer said.
In September 2006, 41 headstones were shattered in a Jewish cemetery in Washington state and in July of that year 45 gravestones were uprooted in a Queens Jewish cemetery.