There’s something broken out there.
On Saturday, it was discovered that as many as four carpool-type vans were spray painted with swastikas and other vile symbols of hatred towards Jews.
It was probably just a group of kids acting badly, using the swastika because they know it represents something bad.
How many times, though, do we have to connect it to the kids acting badly? At what point does it become a hate crime?
I think this is a hate crime.
It was a low point.
While there observing hate’s evil imprints, a group of young black teens approached a vandalized vehicle on Gist Avenue. One did a taunting dance as passed the vandalized van. Another popped a wheelie on the bike he was riding.  I’m not inferring these were the perpetrators of the crime. As recent events in Olney have showed us, one can be white and have Judaism in one’s background and do just as much if not more hate-filled damage.
There wasn’t a feeling of sadness coming from these kids. It was more bravado as if this were some sort of joke.
How do I know they were feeling this way?
I don’t.
I didn’t interview them, I just watched.
And I wondered what line a person crosses that makes them take out a can of spray paint and deface anything with it.
Where did hate overcome reason?
I mean, wasn’t a large group of Jews who built a playground at the nearby Fallstaff Middle School for the entire community?
Isn’t CHAI doing an incredible job of bringing neighbors together?
What about Baltimore Hebrew’s wonderful efforts in building bridges as a black church openly and with total welcome worships in its sanctuary.
So I want to brush this aside and say that this was the handiwork of a bunch of juvenile delinquents.
But I can’t.
I wanted a black leader somewhere, anywhere, elected or not elected to come to the scene of the these crimes. I wanted he or she to help the van owners clean off the signs of hate.
And I wanted the kids sitting there on the streets in a taunting posture see and hear an adult condemn all of this.
We’ve got to do more.
Let’s face it. Nobody can tell me that Jewish kids walking home from the kollel on Labyrinth Road aren’t a little hurried in their steps to get home.
When students are walking home from Northwestern High School through the area streets, there is a level of apprehension by some Jewish neighbors.
We’ve got to establish some sort of connection of familiarity that doesn’t breed fear.
I grew up on Brookhill Road. I used to stand on the corner of Brookhill and Gist on sultry summer nights with my friends and we’d talk until late at night. There wasn’t any fear.
The strangest thing that ever happened I think was on one evening we all looked in amazement as a girl riding a horse clip clopped along Gist Avenue.
From where we stood on the corner back then, I could look now and see both of those vans.
The van parked at Clarinth with the many swastikas was directly in front of a house I was familiar with. I cut that lawn as part of my grass cutting business again in the 60s. I knew many of the people who lived on Clarinth, Brookhill and Labyrinth.
There wasn’t fear.
There wasn’t spray painting.
So, is this what the neighborhood has to look forward to?
The fear and violation that a can of spray paint in the wrong hands can bring.
No, there’s got to be more of a buy-in that this is everyone’s neighborhood.
That’s what the playground build at Fallstaff was trying to accomplish.
That’s what the Shomrim-sponsored Police Appreciation Day last November at Northwestern High School accomplished. There, on that day, blacks, whites, Jews, Hispanics, Catholics, everyone came and had a wonderful autumn day.
But I’m really asking, almost pleading. If heaven forbid an act of hate happened in the Upper Park Heights neighborhood. If someone spray painted a cross burning on the side of a black family’s van, I know this community. Jewish families and organizations would rightfully be among the first out there to help, and would be saddened by what they saw.
I’m just asking for the same.
Would some of our leaders who are African American please step forward and say that spray painting a van with swastikas is “unacceptable?”
That would be at least something.

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