JERUSALEM (JTA) — A spate of graffiti involving the word "Jew" has perplexed Los Angeles-area police.
The word “Jew” or “Jewish,” sometimes accompanied by the letters “TMA,” have been spray-painted on lampposts, freeway overpasses, walls and Dumpsters in the Fairfax area, sometimes alone and sometimes alongside other tagging, the Los Angeles Jewish Journal reported Thursday. No anti-Semitic messages or symbols accompany the word.
The six or seven locations of the graffiti also seem unconnected to anything Jewish, according to Ariella Loewenstein, associate regional director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Pacific Southwest office.
“It’s just a very weird phenomenon,” Loewenstein told the Jewish Journal, noting that anti-Semitic graffiti typically include swastikas or violent language, or might be on a synagogue or Jewish cemetery. “Why pick that one word to spray-paint and leave it at that? Why in these areas, and on these specific things?"
She added later, "It could be random, but when it gets to be this many, that makes it a little less random.”
