Anti-Semitic crimes shock Monsey's Jewish leaders

Monsey - Jewish leaders expressed shock Monday after a pair of anti-Semitic crimes that took place on the night before Holocaust Remembrance Day.

In Monsey, four teenagers were charged with a hate crime after witnesses reported them threatening several residents in the largely Orthodox Jewish neighborhood with an aluminum baseball bat about 10:30 p.m. on Neil Road.

"We believe they were targeting members of the Jewish community," Detective Lt. Brad Weidel of the Ramapo police said Monday.

Weidel said it was unclear if the four teenagers knew about Holocaust Remembrance Day, or Yom Ha'shoah, which commemorates the 6 million Jews killed by the Nazis.

On Monday, several residents of Neil Road described a confusing nighttime scene as four teenagers reportedly threw stones, kicked over garbage cans and verbally threatened passers-by.

"There was screaming, shouting," said Solomon Rosenberg, 16. "I first heard it from inside the house."

Meir Ganz, 52, said he could barely make out the scene on Neil Road from his home as police showed up and a crowd formed outside.

"There were a lot of people," Ganz said. "We never see anything like this here."

The suspects in the Monsey incident are Anthony Soto, 18, Denise Lopez, 17, and Kyle Silceira, 16, all of Spring Valley. Silceira was charged with second-degree aggravated harassment as a hate crime, second-degree menacing as a hate crime, fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon (the bat) and disorderly conduct.

Soto and Lopez were charged with second-degree aggravated harassment as a hate crime and disorderly conduct.

The three were being held in the Rockland County Jail on $10,000 bail each. They are due in court in Ramapo at 2 p.m. Tuesday.

A fourth boy, who is 15, was not identified by police. He was charged as a juvenile delinquent and released to his parents. He will appear in Family Court this month, police said.

At roughly the same time, authorities said, two public parks in Rockland were vandalized, with anti-Semitic messages scrawled in several locations.

In West Haverstraw, the word "Jews" with a line through it was spray-painted on about a half-dozen park benches in Pecks Pond Park. Graffiti also was found on the walking path around the pond and a large rock, Haverstraw police said.

The vandalism was first reported Sunday morning and is thought to have occurred Saturday night.

Haverstraw Supervisor Howard Phillips said Monday that he could not recall a similar incident. He said Haverstraw was a diverse, multi-ethnic, multireligious and multilingual town where tensions rarely flared up.

"We're a melting-pot community," Phillips said. "We've always been able to live together very harmoniously."

As West Haverstraw resident Ronnie Rolls walked through the park Monday morning with her 1-year-old son, Jacob, and the family dog, she expressed her disappointment at the vandalism.

"This is our local park, so I'm shocked," she said. "This doesn't reflect the community at all."

Similar graffiti was also found early Sunday at Haverstraw Bay Park, said Allan Beers, coordinator of the county's Division of Environmental Resources. Beers said vandals had left similar messages scrawled on the entrance to the park and on wood guardrails and a utility box.

Beers said the vandalism likely occurred after 9 p.m. Saturday, when the park is closed for the night.

The acts of vandalism at the two parks are believed to be related, Beers said.

Leaders from Rockland's Jewish community condemned the incidents Monday and pledged to work to reach out to the community to educate and promote tolerance.

"Acts like those committed on the weekend are not merely attacks on Jews, they are an attack on our entire Rockland community," Tanja Sarett, executive director of the Holocaust Museum and Study Center, said in a statement. "The beauty of our community lies in its diversity and its gift of being able to learn from one another."

Sarett was one of several hundred people at the JCC Rockland on Sunday to attend the candlelighting ceremony in memory of the 6 million Jews killed by the Nazis.

Rabbi Morris Zimbalist of Montebello Jewish Center was another.

"It's always disheartening to hear that such incidents occur," Zimbalist said Monday. "It reflects ignorance and intolerance ... in our society."

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