United Against Hate

California teams up against bigotry
after synagogue burnings.

TOM TUGEND

Jewish. Telegraphic Agency

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Los Ang
o eles
1117 nder a giant banner reading
"Sacramento United Against
Hate," some 4,000 citizens
of all faiths and colors have
dedicated themselves to the fight against
bigotry as their answer to arson attacks
on three Sacramento-area synagogues.
More than 2,500 people crammed
into the Community Center Theater
on Monday night, while 1,500 more
listened in an overflow auditorium dur-
ing a two-and-a-half hour rally that par-
ticipants described as "electric" and "the
most emotional experience of my life."
The audience rose to its feet as
California Lt. Gov. Cruz
Bustamante declared, "Tonight all of
us belong to the three synagogues, "
and as Sacramento Mayor Joe Serna
said, "When I hear of synagogues
burning, then I am a Jew."
There were more standing ova-
tions as the representative of a black
housing association presented its
first $10,000 check for a proposed
municipal museum of tolerance.
The gathering
. b also stood and
b
applauded when Abraham Foxman,
national director of the Anti-
Defamation League, observed that in
future years, Sacramento would be held
up as a model of how a community
must respond to bigotry.
Not far from the emotional scene,
more than 100 federal agents from the
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and
Firearms and the FBI were painstaking-
ly combing the three synagogue sites for
evidence to link the hate crimes to their
perpetrators.
Last Friday's predawn attacks target-
ed Congregation
B'nai Israel and
b b
Congregation Beth Shalom, both
Reform temples, and the Kenesset Israel
Torah Center, an Orthodox synagogue.
Total damage was estimated at close to
Si million.
.
At MO of the sites, arsonists left
leaflets that blamed the "International
Jew World Order" and the
"International Jewsmedia" for the war
in Kosovo.
"We are Slays, we will never allow
the International Jew World Order to
take our Land," read one flier. We

fight to keep Serbia free forever."
Hardest hit was B'nai Israel in
downtown Sacramento, whose library
was gutted with the loss of 5,000
books, some hundreds of years old.
Also destroyed were 300 videotapes on
Jewish history, which the congregation
had been collecting for its 150th
anniversary celebration in October.
B'nai Israel is believed to be the old-
est American synagogue west of the
Mississippi River.
At Beth Shalom, vandals broke in
through a side window and started a
fire on the bima, or dais. Earlier this
year, the temple's walls had been
defaced by painted swastikas.
Kenesset Israel was the target of a
Molotov cocktail, which had been

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People of different faiths rally

behind Jewish community

stunned by arson attacks.

lobbed through a sliding glass door.
Politicians swiftly condemned the
attacks.
The California State Assembly on
Monday unanimously approved a reso-
lution calling the fires one of the worst
acts of anti-Semitism in American his-
tory Vice President Al Gore on
Monday condemned the arsons as
),
"cowardly
During a smaller noon rally on
Monday, in a park across from B'nai
Israel, organizers handed out signs with
the slogan, "Sacramento Together,
United We Stand."
Vice Mayor Jimmie Yee, a Chinese
American whose home was firebombed
in 1993, urged Sacramentans to display
the sign in their homes, businesses and
cars, "to rekindle the light of reason and
demonstrate your solidarity with per-
sons of the Jewish Nth."
The idea of a tolerance museum, first
proposed by Rabbi Brad Bloom of B'nai
Israel, drew quick support from Serna.
"The way to stop (hate crimes) is
through education," the Sacramento
mayor said. "If we can issue bonds to