Anti-Semitic Vandals Strike 3rd Building

Spray-painted anti-Semitic slogans were found Tuesday inside a Jewish community center under construction in Canoga Park, Los Angeles police said, the third such discovery in the last week in the West San Fernando Valley.

The graffiti were painted on several inside walls, doors and carpets of the 75,000-square-foot building on the Jewish Community Campus, which is being built in the 22600 block of Vanowen Street, Detective Tim Yost said.

On Sunday morning, graffiti were found sprayed on Temple Emet of Woodland Hills, in the 20400 block of Ventura Boulevard, Yost said.

Last week, vandals struck the Temple Solael in West Hills. A property owners’ association has offered $1,500, the temple has offered $1,000 and Rabbi Bernard M. Cohen of Temple Solael today personally offered $5,000, bringing the total reward to $7,500 for information leading to the conviction of those responsible for that incident.

The Canoga Park community center is being built by the Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles. Earlier this month, the City Council voted to issue $9.5 million in tax-exempt bonds to refinance the project at a lower interest rate. The city acts as an agent, selling the bonds without committing city funds.

The center is scheduled to open in September, providing office space for about a dozen agencies that will provide child care, family counseling, job referral and other social services to Jews and non-Jews.

No suspects have been identified in the three spray-paintings.

“I think they’re connected,” Yost said of the incidents. “It’s just strange that they started to happen all of a sudden.”

But a spokesman for the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, a national organization that monitors anti-Semitic activity, said the two most recent incidents are probably the work of an imitator of the Temple Solael vandalism.

“Sometimes, after one incident gets some media coverage, you’ll get a copycat type of thing,” said Jonathan Bernstein, assistant director of the ADL’s Los Angeles office. “I believe that’s all it is.”