Vandals strike pair of sukkahs in Northern California

Thursday, October 11, 2007 | by

joe eskenazi

One rarely finds a silver lining in an arson attack at a Jewish organization, but Hillel of Silicon Valley may have one. The unknown vandal or vandals who torched the Hillel’s sukkah last week may not have been doing it because they hated Jews. They may just have enjoyed burning things.

“At this time, we don’t have any evidence to point to this as a hate crime, though we haven’t ruled that out. But we don’t have any evidence such as writing or notes left or any suspicious activity reported by the staff over there,” said Sgt. Michael Santos of the San Jose State University police department of the Oct. 2 late night incident.

Hillel of Silicon Valley has no backyard, so the $1,700 flame-retardant sukkah was set up in the driveway. Less than 12 hours after leaving an event in the sukkah that broke up at 8:30 p.m., SJSU sophomore Michelle Salinsky was walking to a morning class when she spotted the hut’s charred remains.

“To hear that this could possibly not be a hate crime is kind of even more shocking,” she said. “Why would someone do that without any reason?”

Ay, there’s the rub. Since the polyester “walls” of the structure were flame retardant, whoever lit the fire must have stood in the driveway for quite some time; police were unable to re-ignite the structure when attempting to gauge its flammability.

Sue Maltiel, the Hillel’s executive director, said the value of the sukkah doesn’t come close to meeting the organization’s fire insurance deductible. She noted that the Hillel did not have a large floodlight and its security camera was a dummy. Real security cameras and more lighting will be installed.

The house is located just two blocks from the SJSU campus in a neighborhood that has, of late, seen its fair share of petty crime. In the last couple of months, someone shattered the Hillel’s window and, later, a would-be burglar broke another window and climbed in before being chased off by the alarm. A student who recently parked overnight in the Hillel’s driveway reported a burglary.

“We’ve checked with the San Jose police and fire departments and they haven’t had any reports of suspicious fires in the area in the last month or so,” said Santos. “That’s the problem we have right now. We don’t have a motive so we can’t classify it as a hate crime.”

That’s not the case at U.C. Davis, where last week a sukkah located on the university’s main quad was defaced with what appeared to be a permanent marker. One or more vandals scrawled “End Israeli Occupation” and “Free Palestine” on the sukkah’s cloth walls.

“This is a religious structure that has nothing to do with Israel,” Davis Hillel Program Director Mike Amerikaner told the California Aggie student newspaper.

“This is not something that’s new. We’ve been dealing with anti-Semitism on campus for a while now.”