For the second time in Northeast Philadelphia – the one remaining heavily Jewish area in the City of Brotherly Love – there has been an attack of blatantly anti-Semitic vandalism. And acts of anti-Semitic vandalism have not been confined just to this area in the past several months.
The most recent attack was the spray painting of swastikas across the entire front of a kosher butcher shop. The swastikas were found by the owner of Simon’s Glatt Kosher Meats on the morning of Sept. 11.
An earlier incident took place in late June, when swastikas defaced the building housing Congregations of Ner Tzedek, located just blocks away from the kosher butcher. Still earlier in the year, a rock was thrown through the front glass door window of the shul.
And just a few months before that, in March, a swastika was spray-painted next to Philadelphia’s Holocaust Memorial. This statue is located along one of the busiest thoroughfares in Philadelphia, the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, at 16th Street.
There were no eyewitnesses for any of the events, and Philadelphia police are still looking into whether there is any connection between the incidents.
Which would be worse, if there was a connection or there wasn’t?