Mensches offer antidote to hateful graffiti, bomb threat
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Luminaries such as these were lit for cancer survivors and victims during Slam Cancer events held in 2021 and 2022 at Attleboro's Balfour Riverwalk Park. Hateful graffiti was found there recently. |
Earlier this month, and within
days of Hamas’ brutal terrorist attack on Israel from the Gaza Strip that has
led to a wider war that has already caused thousands of civilian deaths on both
sides, antisemitism reared its ugly head in Attleboro, MA.
First, the city’s only synagogue, Congregation Agudas Achim, was the target of
a bomb threat --- one of many such threats that were emailed to Jewish synagogues
and temples in Rhode Island and across New England in the wake of Israel’s response
to the Hamas attack.
Second, just days after, it was revealed that hurtful antisemitic and racist
graffiti had been discovered at a popular city downtown park, the Balfour
Riverwalk Park. It evidently had been scrawled there about a month before it
was reported to police on Oct. 6, but it became known after the city’s Council
on Human Relations brought it to the attention of the Attleboro City Council on
Oct. 17.
In response, I wrote this column, remembering some positive times in the park,
and expressing gratitude for people who were kind enough to condemn both instances
of hate in no uncertain terms. I also praised the church that without hesitation
invited the synagogue to use its sanctuary to continue with their Sabbath
morning services until police deemed it safe for the congregants to return to
the synagogue.
The link to the column, as it appears on the newspaper’s website follows:
https://www.thesunchronicle.
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The month my older daughter Arianna turned 2, my wife Lynne and I took turns
spending time on a Saturday helping to assemble playground equipment at what
was then the brand-new Balfour Riverwalk Park in downtown Attleboro. It was
June 1998.
Volunteering was what many employees of The Sun Chronicle did to help out the
community. Plus, I wanted to pitch in because I was -- and remain -- a big fan
of downtown Attleboro.
In the years following, my wife and I took both Arianna, and then a few years
later, our younger daughter, Alana, to the park.
Later, the park was a gathering spot before and after the Attleboro YMCA’s 5K,
10K and kids’ fun runs that used to be held there annually in May in
conjunction with the observance of Healthy Kids Day.
Fast forward to 2021 and 2022, and that same park provided a safe haven during
the COVID-19 pandemic, to hold two events in support of the Relay For Life of
Greater Attleboro to benefit the American Cancer Society.
Those events featured several writers reading their original poems and essays
that reflected on their personal experiences with cancer. Held in the evening,
the relay’s Slam Cancer initiative included the lighting of luminaries for
cancer survivors and victims. Both years’ events took place thanks to the
relay’s generous community partners, the Attleboro Public Library and the
Attleboro Arts Museum and their gracious leaders, Amy Rhilinger and Mim Brooks
Fawcett.
I mention those fond memories of Balfour Riverwalk Park as a way of contrasting
those good occasions to how heartbroken I felt last week when it was learned
that racist and antisemitic graffiti had been found there. The graffiti was
discovered just days after the only synagogue in Attleboro, Congregation Agudas
Achim on North Main Street, received a bomb threat -- a threat that was also
sent to several other Jewish houses of worship in Rhode Island and elsewhere in
New England.
According to a report in The Sun Chronicle, the graffiti received little
attention when it was discovered, but was brought to the attention of the city
council at its Oct. 17 meeting by the Council on Human Rights.
Attleboro Police Chief Kyle Heagney, in a subsequent Sun Chronicle report, said
it appears the graffiti was scrawled at the park’s playground around Sept. 6,
although he didn’t learn about it until Oct. 6, and it had long been erased by
that time.
But that didn’t diminish how angry that graffiti made many in Attleboro feel.
In bringing it to the city council’s attention, the human rights panel
reflected that outrage.
“Violent racist and anti-Semitic graffiti discovered on children’s playground
equipment in Balfour Riverwalk Park” should be roundly condemned by all leaders
of the city, including the mayor, council and school committee, it said.
The human rights council’s Marcia Sweeney reported that the graffiti included
swastikas, the letters KKK and antisemitic and racist terms. “We recommend
unequivocally condemning this incident and more broadly condemning the
intolerance of the differences that make the city of Attleboro a great place to
live,” she said.
Sweeney submitted a resolution condemning and denouncing hate speech,
discrimination, harassment and intimidation of all people.
Those incidents happened at a time of an intense spike in hatred toward both
Jews and Muslims in the wake of the Oct. 7 brutal terrorist attack by Hamas in
Israel and the war that has followed, which has led to the deaths of thousands
of innocent civilians on both sides.
The war has unfortunately inflamed anger and increased what the United States
already has in dangerous excess: hate that fuels violence.
Ample proof of the debilitating and frightening rise of hate comes from the
Anti-Defamation League, which in April reported a 41 percent rise in antisemitic
incidents in Massachusetts in 2022 over 2021, and a more than 35 percent spike
nationwide over that same period. And that hatred has only accelerated in 2023.
The only good news about the graffiti and the bomb threat at the synagogue is
the condemnation of such actions that swiftly followed.
At the council meeting, the Rev. Cheryl Harris stood to support the resolution,
calling the graffiti “wrong and corrosive.”
In addition, a representative from Murray Church on North Main Street also
condemned the incident and City Council President Jay DiLisio told Sun
Chronicle Staff Writer George W. Rhodes that he was horrified and disgusted by
the incident. “This isn’t what Attleboro represents,” DiLisio said.
And, after the bomb threat at the synagogue, the police quickly responded,
while the synagogue’s neighbor across the street, the Evangelical Covenant
Church, invited the congregation to finish its Sabbath morning service at its
sanctuary on the day of the bomb threat.
That service included one of the most joyous occasions in the Jewish tradition,
a bat mitzvah for a teenage girl. Both the bat mitzvah for girls at ages 12 or
13 (depending on the branch of Judaism and the congregation) or the bar mitzvah
for 13-year-old boys entail the honoree being called to the altar to read a
portion of the Torah (the Old Testament’s five books of Moses) for the first
time as someone who counts as an adult in the eyes of the congregation.
This father of the now-grown-up young woman who enjoyed the fruits of my labor assembling
the playground equipment in 1998 --- and who proudly watched her being
bat-mitzvahed 14 years ago --- approves of the unselfish gesture from the
church members.
Attleboro is blessed to have such mensches --- decent, selfless people who care
for others --- to counter the hatred that sadly managed to find its way to the
city.
Larry Kessler is a retired Sun Chronicle local
news editor and can be reached at larrythek65@gmail.com. He blogs at larrytheklineup.blogspot.com
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