For the second time in less than a week, a Jewish congregation in San Antonio, Texas, uncovered anti-Semitic graffiti on its property Monday morning, the My San Antonio news website reported.
Monday’s incident came just days after the discovery of swastikas, racial slurs and widespread vandalism rocked a neighboring Jewish community.
Rabbi Jeffrey Abraham said the latest graffiti was found on a storage shed near the back of the Congregation Agudas Achim property, less than three miles away from the Rodfei Sholom Synagogue, where the first vandalism took place.
Linda Moad, executive director of the Agudas Achim congregation, told My San Antonio a maintenance worker had gone to the shed around 10:00 a.m. and found two grills missing, along with the words “Jew Jew” sprayed onto the structure.
“I was already disgusted by what happened at Rodfei Sholom last week,” Abraham said. “This hits a little closer to home because it’s at my synagogue. I am just saddened that people would stoop to this level to try to break our community.”
The synagogue, founded in 1889, serves about 550 families on San Antonio’s North Side. Abraham said Agudas Achim is the second-largest congregation in the city.
Governor Greg Abbott called the vandalism an “offensive and disturbing attack on people of all faiths” in a Monday statement.
Members of the congregation made the discovery at the same time the San Antonio Police Department, FBI, Crime Stoppers, and local elected officials came together to announce an award of $11,500 for information leading to the Rodfei Sholom vandals, the news website reported.
San Antonio PD interim Chief Anthony Treviño said investigators are working around the clock to track down suspects in the “act of ignorance” at Congregation Rodfei Sholom.
Last week, the FBI said it had identified a person of interest who lives near the community, but on Monday, in response to a question regarding that individual, police said no arrests have been made and that they are pursuing multiple suspects.
Anti-Semitism has been on the rise in the United States, with a 21% increase overall in 2014, according to a damning Anti-Defamation League (ADL) report released in March.
In April, shots were fired outside of a synagogue in Nashville, Tennessee. No one was hurt.
In late March, two Jewish teenagers were attacked with paintballs in Brooklyn as they were coming home from synagogue with their grandfather. Several weeks earlier, the car of a rabbi in the city of Dallas was vandalized with a swastika.
Earlier in the year, some 30 homes were spray-painted with swastikas and anti-Semitic expressions in Madison, Wisconsin.