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.