Leaders of Howard County's Jewish community are disturbed by anti-Semitic vandalism earlier this week at a Columbia shopping center and other recent bias incidents, but say they don't indicate a rise of intolerance in Columbia.
While urging vigilance, they praised the community's swift, strong reaction to the incident and the effectiveness of county human rights programs, which assist victims of racial, religious and ethnic hate-bias incidents.
"We know the community is very strongly behind us and against bigotry," said Michael Jacobs, spokesman for the Jewish Federation of Howard County, an umbrella group representing Jewish organizations. "Every time anything like this has happened, there's been an expression of support and outrage from the non-Jewish community as well."
On Sunday night or Monday morning, large red swastikas were painted on the windows and outside walls of a Harper's Choice Village Center photography store owned by Russian Jewish immigrants, an act Jewish leaders say was probably committed by juveniles as a prank.
Although county and Jewish Federation annual reports don't show a dramatic increase in anti-Semitic incidents, federation executive director Steven Shaw said that incidents have been on the rise over the past four months.
Incidents reported since fall include:
* A bomb threat left on the answering machine of the Jewish Federation's office in the Oakland Mills Interfaith Center in mid-December. Police concluded that the threat was a prank, noting laughter in the background on the message.
* Broken windows and the painting of swastikas and anti-Semitic epithets on the outside walls and at Thunder Hill Elementary School in Oakland Mills over Thanksgiving weekend.
* Swastikas painted on a stop sign and an intersection in Dorsey's Search Village around Halloween.
* A teen-ager dressed in a Ku Klux Klan costume on Halloween who rang the doorbell of a Jewish household in Dorsey's Search, yelled epithets and ran away.
Mr. Jacobs offered several theories for recent hate-bias incidents: an increase in rowdiness in the fall as schools re-open, a general backlash against affirmative action programs and protections for minority groups and the fact that some people now move to Columbia simply for its convenient location, rather than its philosophy of racial and religious harmony.