The recent news that Ian Jacob Baron, the 22-year-old Montgomery County man accused of recently desecrating B’nai Shalom Synagogue in Olney, was raised by adoptive Jewish parents shocked me … and yet didn’t shock me.

You may recall that not so long ago, in October of 2008, we had a somewhat similar case here in “Charm City.”

Baltimore Hebrew Congregation and Beth Tfiloh Synagogue were also hit by anti-Semitic vandalism and graffiti, during the High Holiday season no less. Their lawn signs for the Associated campaign were defaced. And it turned out that the perpetrators were young men of reportedly Jewish backgrounds, according to the police.

Of course, the two cases are quite different. Baron described himself to police as a neo-Nazi who is active in the white supremacist movement.

I’m not excusing them but the two young adults and 17-year-old in the BHC/Beth Tfiloh case were basically typical American teenagers doing something very stupid and wrong (and unlawful) but not necessarily intentionally ideological, according to my sources.

Still, you have to wonder, what is inspiring a few – and I stress a few – Jewish kids to feel such antipathy and anger toward the Jewish community that they would go to such lengths of sheer hatred?

Where does this well of unleashed, uncontrolled fury come from?

When I wrote the BHC/Beth Tfiloh article in 2008, I posed that question to Beth Tfiloh’s Rabbi Mitchell Wohlberg. “It does not surprise me,” he said of the perpetrators’ Jewishness. “Acts of teenage rebellion take on many forms.”

Art Abramson, executive director of the Baltimore Jewish Council, told WBAL-TV at the time that the suspects might be “self-hating Jews. … Hopefully, that’s not the case in this instance, but it could be.”

And BHC’s Rabbi Andy Busch would only say to me, “I wouldn’t pretend to guess the motivations.”

Look, I still can remember being young and angry. But not to the point where I’d get a can of paint and spray swastikas on a synagogue or throw coins on a shul’s stoop to signify Jewish greed.

What’s going on here? Where does this hatred come from within our own ranks? What can we do about it?

I have 2 adopted boys.  Both had Jewish birthmothers. Both have turned against their heritage and tradition.  They are agnostics. They are good people but were never mentored by anyone who loved the tradition and history, even though we, as parents, tried. We always observed holidays, went to services moderately, the kids went to Hebrew school, had bar mitzvahs. Neither wants to identify themselves with Judaism. If asked, they claim to be people who believe in a higher power and that organized religion stifles them. I think their anger came more from being adopted and they felt that religion but contraints on them, not of their own choosing.