Ocean Grove United demonstrating in the Grove. Mary Walton photograph. 2012
Editorial by Paul Goldfinger, MD, Editor Blogfinger.net
This article is from 2018, but we post it again now in case there are Grovers in 2023 who want to engage in unnecessary provocation based on identity politics. There’s a lot of this going around nationally, but no sign of “hate” in Ocean Grove (except for an occasional sign that says, “Hate has no home here.”)
Interestingly, it is impossible to find an accepted definition for the terms “hate speech” or “hate crime” because the definition is in the eyes of the beholder. Miriam-Webster says that hate speech is defined as “speech expressing hatred of a particular group of people.” Even the Anti-Defamation League web site does not attempt to define these terms. They basically oppose discrimination of all types.
So this broad definition allows for the term to be used for all sorts of groups, so no particular group owns the complaint of “hate speech.” I don’t know how the Neptune Police define “hate crime,” but they did use the term in 2019. Their web site doesn’t clarify the term.
November, 2018: During 2018 Mischief Night, some individuals “vandalized cars with swastikas and racial slurs in Ocean Grove.” (APP 11/7/18) The Neptune Police Department said that they were not viewing the incident as a bias crime or anything “politically motivated.”
Deputy Mayor Carol Rizzo (a Grover) said ( source—APP), “The community should view this as simply ‘something that happened during Mischief Night. I don’t think we should give it anymore credence than that. ‘”
The descriptions of the event in the news did not include any anti-Semitic language, and swastikas are not necessarily anti-Semitic symbols. Some kids, like punk rockers, may draw a swastika without thinking of Jews. The “N word” was also found, according to the APP.
A representative, Joshua Cohen, of the NJ Regional Office of ADL said, “The swastika has become a ubiquitous symbol in graffiti, but it does not always carry “’anti-Semitic intent.’”
He also said, “A random swastika appearing in a neutral location is an entirely different proposition than compared to one on a synagogue.”
“Incidents involving the image found with no accompanying anti-Semitic imagery or writing on, say, a dumpster at a 7-Eleven or an overpass on the Garden State Parkway, fall into a category that the ADL has stopped including in its annual audit of anti-Jewish hate crimes. There is no indication that such cases specifically target Jews.”
Cohen concluded by saying, “Regardless of the specific intent, it would be a mistake to minimize the swastika. It shocks the conscience, and we all know what it is. It’s a hate symbol.”
The NTPD was going to investigate the possibility of a “hate crime,” but they have so far come up with nothing.
OGU joined forces with the OGHOA to fan the flames of controversy when other such incidents did not occur before or since that night.
But, the OGU/HOA combined complainers consortium (CCC) have invited the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), an international organization that fights anti-Semitism world-wide, to come here in January 2019 to “speak on this issue.”
Is this what the members of the Home Groaners want their organization to get involved with? And why is the HOA having any sort of joint activity with the highly partisan group ironically called Ocean Grove United.
It is almost laughable for the OGU and its ally the Home Groaners to jump on this bandwagon. Jews have been subject to all sorts of murder and mayhem since the times of the Romans, so the Jewish people have largely developed a thick skin over minor incidents such as what the OGU and HOA are jumping up and down over in Ocean Grove.
The ADL says, “Anti-Semitism is the belief or behavior hostile toward Jews just because they are Jewish.”
Is that what’s going on in the Grove? Doesn’t the ADL have some terrorism, synagogue shootings, or murders of civilians to spend their time with?
The truth is that anti-Semitism does not “have a home” in the Grove, and many Jewish people live here without such concerns.
Most popular sentiment in the Grove is to assume the Halloween vandalism to be the work of ignorant out-of-towners, probably kids looking for trouble. Most think that the incident should have been dropped as an indicator of bias in this town, and as a news story, it lasted about 24 hours, with no noise coming out of the Grove.
OGU, a group that seems to be in a deep sleep most of the time, reappears, like Brigadoon, whenever they find an excuse to complain about bias in the Grove. They say that the ADL meeting in January 2019 is “in response to the concerns of Ocean Grove residents.”
Perhaps they should tell us how many OG residents would like to see the big guns (ADL) brought into the Grove to satisfy those “concerns?”
In our recent piece about the “hate has no home here” signs, we had a flurry of opinions in the Comments, but hardly any concern about the Mischief Night event.
In America we live in a free society, one which is not perfect and where hate is sometimes expressed and where such hate needs to be opposed, but Ocean Grove is not such a place.
Addendum: This Blogfinger article below says a lot about Ocean Grove United:
OGU slams the Camp Meeting Association 2016
NICOLAI RIMSKY-KORSAKOV: “The Flight of the Bumblebee”
Reblogged this on Blogfinger and commented:
This article was about the efforts of two OG organizations to make a phony fuss about alleged anti-semitism in the Grove. But that was beaten back by commenters in Blogfinger. The HOA wanted to bring the Anti-Defamation League into town, but apparently they backed down. So today is Holocaust Remembrance Day, and where are those organizations speaking out today on this topic?
In remembrance, here is a YouTube video that tells the story of real anti-semitism.
The person who spray painted these symbols was in all probability a teenager and therefore a student in the Neptune school system. Instead of having the ADL come and speak to a room full of people who clearly were not the ones who did this nasty deed, why don’t the two groups have the ADL speak in the Neptune school system? Clearly, that is where it is truly needed.
The solution to such ignorance in this country is education.
If a kid did this, he needs a good swift kick in the arse. My Jewish friends in the Grove lost their whole heritage, families, loved ones over ignorant Nazi fervor and a fever to be better than someone else over a simple matter of genes. And the gay members of the community were oppressed and marginalized under oppressive laws.
So kick that punk brat anyway you can, to teach him there is no place for hate. Apologists are no difference from brats. They are just older brats. 1945 Concentration Camps were not so long ago; just a few years. And it can happen again. So no. Not here or anywhere else.
The OGU and the OGHOA should step back and return their credentials as protectors of the Jews in Ocean Grove.
Perhaps they haven’t noticed that no OG Jewish citizens have expressed concerns publicly over the Mischief Night “mayhem.” Nor have any of the local synagogues, and there are many in the area.
The only OG Jewish organization, the Havurah, has said not a word about this matter.
So why don’t you nice ladies withdraw your invitation to the ADL. Your agitation is not necessary or wanted. Find another cause to rally around.
Oh, did you notice that no African-Americans in the Grove complained about the “N word” that night? Why don’t you invite Sharpton to give a talk at Nagles?
The bigger issue for me is that mischief night mayhem has come to Ocean Grove and what can be done to prevent it next year.
In the 25 years of OG home ownership I don’t recall hearing about mischief night incidents on our streets and so I was thankful that we didn’t have the kind of chaos and damage that I experienced growing up in northern NJ. What happened this year in OG is unacceptable.
Count me in as one of the Grovers who would like to hear what the ADL has to say.
Young boys (I was once one) look for trouble. It’s new, it’s fresh, it’s exciting. Makes little no-one you you feel like a REAL badass.
Pretty soon though, they live long enough to find out that trouble isn’t something you have to look for, it’s something that finds you, and often precisely when you’ve got better things to do. Not so exciting at all at that point. They used to call this process “growing up”. Now? who knows…
OGU has become a total caricature of itself, a solution looking for a problem.
No one is listening to these two Broadway women any more…
Several years ago, two teenage boys spray painted swastikas on mischief night in a town in northern Monmouth County. It was reported as a hate crime. One of the boys turned out to be Jewish who didn’t know or understand what he had spray painted. This was a clear failure of the education system teaching World War two history. It turned out not to be a hate crime but pure mischief and purer stupidity.
Not knowing who or why this was done in OG does nothing more than brand the entire town thanks to these two groups.
I think your editorial is insensitive especially when the current political environment and recent events as in Pittsburgh are taken into account.
Maybe it’s not the worst idea to hear what the ADL has to say.