Task Force Opposed to Anti-Jewish Acts Forms

More than 100 evangelical ministers in Los Angeles and Orange counties announced Thursday the formation of a task force against anti-Semitism.

“Unchallenged anti-Semitism is really a disgrace to the Christian Church and flies in the face of our claiming to be a moral force,” said the Rev. Frank Eiklor, a religious broadcaster in Orange County who spearheaded a similar effort in the Boston area several years ago.

Joined by about two dozen ministers at a Los Angeles press conference to announce creation of the Christian Task Force Against Anti-Semitism, Eiklor noted that swastikas have been appearing on synagogues and other Jewish establishments in Southern California.

In the most recent case, a Highland Park man was charged Thursday with spray-painting swastikas and racial epithets on the walls of a Glendale synagogue.

Scrawled on Walls

Joseph William Dunlap, 32, was arrested Tuesday after a caretaker at Temple Sinai found the anti-Semitic graffiti scrawled in red paint on the doors and walls of the synagogue.

Dunlap, who was on parole for robbery, is being held without bail on one felony count of vandalizing a house of worship for the purpose of intimidation. If convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of three years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

The incident was the fourth act of racial or religious vandalism in Glendale since a Nov. 22 appearance in the city by avowed racist J. B. Stoner.

On Tuesday, Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich asked the county Commission on Human Relations to investigate whether there is a connection between the incidents and Stoner’s appearance.

Rabbi Haim Asa of Temple Beth Tikvah in Fullerton voiced his support of the evangelical ministers’ group at the press conference but said he was uncertain that it “will make it any less kosher to be anti-Semitic.” Asa’s synagogue was the target of anti-Semitic vandalism in 1986. The rabbi, who survived the Holocaust as a youth in Bulgaria, credited Christian churches in that country with saving 50,000 Jews from German concentration camps.

Prepared Guide

The Christian Task Force Against Anti-Semitism has prepared a nine-page guide for ministers and lay leaders that provides a historical background for understanding anti-Semitism, along with an action plan for combatting it.

Its recommendations include responding to anti-Semitism with letters to the editor and telephone calls to radio talk shows, replying to offensive remarks heard “at civic groups, service clubs, church groups, political gatherings, etc., with polite and positive information about the Jewish people.”

The guide also urges the leaders to “perform positive acts of friendship through the obtaining of permission to repair with Christian funds and labor any anti-Semitic vandalism directed at Jewish establishments.”

Eiklor and others at the press conference stressed that those involved in the task force not approach the issue of anti-Semitism with any “hidden agenda” for proselytizing within the Jewish community.