A yeshiva in the New Jersey town of Lakewood was broken into last Wednesday night by a vandal who defaced the Jewish study hall with swastikas and other anti-Semitic hate symbols.
Students and staff of the Mesivta Ohr Chaim Meir Yeshiva discovered the crime last Thursday morning when they arrived, and reported it immediately to the police, according to the local news source The Lakewood Scoop.
After police arrived on the scene they investigated the yeshiva's security cameras, and soon found a tall black male caught on tape committing the hate crime.
The yeshiva's management expressed its hope that the police will quickly succeed in locating the criminal, and will take all required steps so as to ensure that similar anti-Semitic incidents are not repeated.
In fact this is not the first time in recent weeks that swastikas have marred Lakewood; in mid August 45-year-old Scott F. Cooney was arrested for carving a swastika into the lawn of a local home with a lead pipe in broad daylight, reports NBC.
The residents of the home were inside when the vandalism occurred, and watched terrified as the anti-Semitic symbol was etched into their property. They told police they had been targeted by Cooney for several months with swastikas.
Cooney was charged with bias intimidation, harassment and criminal mischief.
America has proven not to be immune from the skyrocketing global anti-Semitism, as several severe cases of violence targeting Jews have occurred in recent months.
In New York, Jews have been targeted for several long months in an anti-Semitic version of the brutal "knockout game," in which generally a group of black youths sucker punch visibly identifiable Jews.
In early August, 60-year-old Rabbi Joseph Raksin hy''d was shot to death as he walked to a local synagogue in Miami, Florida. Reportedly Raksin was shot by two young African-American men who fled the scene after the murder