TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/102990/1029170.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 8.3 KB | 165 lines

                                                                                AMERICAN SCENE, Page 27

Clifton, New Jersey

Warlocks, Witches and Swastikas


A forgiving rabbi tries to enlighten the four teenagers who
defaced his home and temple

By RICHARD BEHAR


    Mike dreamed of becoming a professional basketball player
-- but hey, it was "Mischief Night," the eve before Halloween,
and the 14-year-old had another sport on his mind: Jew baiting.
Using a can of shaving cream, he sprayed the words F--- YOU JEW
BAGEL, without the dash, on the garage of Eugene Markovitz, 67,
the oldest and most prominent rabbi in Clifton, N. J. Joining
the fun were Mike's pals Johnny (whose best friend, he says,
is Jewish) and Peter (whose grandfather rescued Holocaust Jews
in Holland). I HATE JEWS, scrawled one boy. GO BACK TO YOUR OWN
COUNTRY, wrote another. After squirting the house with blue
paint, a fourth boy, Tony sprayed a swastika on the car of Saul
Shaw, a 79-year-old Jew who lives a few blocks away.
Markovitz's temple and a kosher delicatessen were also
barraged. That was 1988, but for the next two years the
aftermath of these hate crimes continued to roil the
complacency of this lily-white suburb and its 75,000 residents.

    Last summer the four fresh-faced lads (whose names are
changed here) -- the sons of a dentist, a teacher, a banker and
a part-time police officer -- were shown to seats in the
sanctuary of the Clifton Jewish Center, one of the buildings
they defaced. They were chewing gum, cracking knuckles, trying
to balance yarmulkes on their heads. Markovitz broke the
tension. "Am I to judge you by your earrings?" the rabbi asked
one boy from the pulpit. "You all grew up with beautiful
families, but you must never take anything for granted. You
must always relearn the lesson of freedom."

    Twelve months ago, Superior Court Judge Frank Donato was
tempted to send these first-time offenders, all age 13 to 14,
to a juvenile prison for two years. After all, their rampage
had coincided with the 50th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the
shattering of Jewish property in Germany and Austria that
marked the start of the Holocaust. Victim Shaw, who broke down
and cried in court while recalling the death of his best friend
by "Nazi bullets," had unsuccessfully begged the judge to
release the boys' names to the press. "They should have been
persecuted, not prosecuted," says Shaw angrily. But at a hearing
last Halloween, Donato ordered the boys to attend 25 hours of
classes on Jewish culture, to be taught by Markovitz at the
temple he has led for 40 years. "He wants to be part of the
healing," noted Donato at the time.

    If the sentence was unusual, the offense, unfortunately, was
not. Crimes of prejudice are on the rise in New Jersey. In 1989
there were 112 reports of anti-Semitic vandalism in that state,
a 67% increase from 1988 (in contrast to 2.7% for the entire
nation), according to the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai
B'rith. Thus New Jersey's efforts to cope with the crisis are
being watched elsewhere. Last June, inspired by Donato's
sentence, a panel of three judges in Westchester County, N.Y.,
subjected three anti-Semitic vandals to a Holocaust quiz. In
preparation, the young men, ages 18 to 20, were required to
read a chapter from James Michener's Poland that describes a
Nazi death camp.

    In the Clifton case, the boys got an inspired teacher.
Anti-Semitism had driven Markovitz's father, also a rabbi, to
abandon prewar Romania for Brooklyn in 1938. Eugene was then
15, and the experience sparked him to become heavily involved
in community affairs. He earned a master's degree in American
history and, in the 1960s, served on local commissions that
mediated race riots and rehabilitated delinquent youth. More
recently, Markovitz has served as a visiting professor at a
nearby college, as well as a chaplain to Clifton's police and
fire departments.

    The rabbi was bursting with zeal and passion to help the
vandals, even though some fellow Jews feared that he was
wasting his time. "One must never give up on young people,"
says Markovitz. "In Judaism, it's literally a crime to do so."
He subjected the four boys to a Holocaust film, visits by local
Christian clergy and discussions of other bias crimes that have
made headlines. The boys are not especially articulate -- three
are struggling in school, and all are prone to macho posturing
-- but they are hardly neo-Nazis in training. They are likable
kids who, like so many of their generation, sport stylish
haircuts, $75 sneakers and bright-colored jackets emblazoned
with the logos of college sports teams. None appear to have
discovered smoking, drinking or drugs. "The scariest part is
that it's usually the boy next door," says William Johnston,
who directs the nation's oldest hate-crimes police unit in
Boston. "You're looking for the shaved head and the Doc Martens
boots. Well, there are plenty of `skinheads' out there, and
they look just like you and me."

    The teens insisted they bear no real animosity toward Jews,
that their Halloween prankishness was inspired by old World War
II movies and schoolyard jokes. Yet a week before Mischief
Night, Mike painted a swastika on a school wall that he, Tony
and Peter signed with their names. Tony privately admits that
while walking the streets, he and his buddies would sometimes
quietly mock the "funny-looking beanies" Orthodox Jews wear.

    The Clifton youths embody contradictions and insensitivities
that are getting harder to contain as American society grows
more ethnically diverse. On the one hand, they seemed genuinely
sorry about their acts. On the other hand, they couple their
admissions of wrongdoing with observations, like Peter's, that
Jews "push things too far. They think we owe them." Mike
doesn't dislike Jews, but feels that they are generally
"cheap." Tony would like to see a world where  Jews and others
don't "overreact" when they see swastikas. He also suspects
that the elderly Shaw's emotional breakdown in court was
"fake."

    Peter's father, a bank vice president, would like to get to
the bottom of the vandalism. "Before I go six feet under, I'd
like to get the whole story about where they got these ideas,"
he says. But even he shoulders some of the blame for not
communicating more with his son. Peter's grandfather risked his
life hiding Jews beneath the floorboards of his home in
northern Holland during WWII. Yet Peter first learned of this
heroic legacy not from his father but from Rabbi Markovitz.
Explains the father: "The Holocaust just wasn't something we
talked about in the house."

    The boys' ignorance about their own backgrounds extends to
religion. All were surprised when Markovitz told them that
Christianity sprouted from Judaism. Until last year, three boys
attended church regularly, but none could name his own priest.
Nevertheless, Markovitz gave untiringly to his students, not
once expressing any rage over their crimes. In return, the boys
marveled at this forgiving little man who lavished so much talk
and kindness and humor on them. "The rabbi is one of the nicest
guys you could know," says Mike. The teens' parents concur, but
they are also bitter about the public attention that surrounded
the case. "My son received more punishment than drug dealers
with guns," laments Mike's mother, a Clifton housewife.

    In the end, Markovitz offered to provide the boys with
letters of recommendation for future jobs or schools. "They
were not very expressive, yet each had something to say," he
noted. "When you deal with children their age, they may seem
not to be listening, but you leave their young minds with
images and symbols. They see that the rabbi and priest are good
friends. The mystery of Judaism is removed, and they see its
commonality with their own religion. They don't have to love
Jews, but they've learned to respect them."

    For almost two years Markovitz couldn't bring himself to
clean the profanities from his garage. The rain washed away a
top layer of cream, but a legible residue  was left behind. "I
could have painted it 100 times," he says, staring at a fading
swastika. "How could four kids from the neighborhood, whose
parents are fairly prominent, do this? I decided I would try
to bring some cure to it. Then I'd repaint."