Jewish community groups here have joined with the mayor’s office in offering rewards totaling $20,000 for the arrest and conviction of the person or persons who placed pipe bombs at a synagogue, a rabbi’s home and a political party headquarters last Monday, the first day of Rosh Hashanah.
The bombs were said to have the intensity of hand grenades and “could have killed someone, ” according to a police department spokesman.
The Jewish Community Federation and Jewish Community Relations Council of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma Counties, the American Jewish Congress’ Northern California Division, and Mayor Dianne Feinstein’s office announced the rewards last Tuesday. Each organization and the mayor’s office put up $5,000.
“Stop the Jew Food Tax,” “Death to All Zionist Jews” and “Free the People” was written on “pieces of paper wrapped around the bombs, ” according to Inspector Tom Dickson, the S.F. police department’s liaison to the Jewish community.
ONE BOMB EXPLODED, INJURING TWO PERSONS
One bomb exploded Monday at about 12:15 a.m. at the headquarters of the Humanist Party in San Francisco’s Sunset District. Two party workers escaped injury in the blast, which blew out a door and broke windows. The new party claims about 10,000 members, but has no connection with the Jewish community.
The second bomb was discovered at the Horowitz Cultural Center at Congregation Beth Sholom in the city’s Richmond district about 8:30 a.m. by a custodian “who went back around to the school and saw the bomb on a ledge,” Dickson said. The bomb at the Center, located around the corner from the synagogue’s main entrance, was discovered nearly an hour after worshippers filled the sanctuary for Rosh Hashanah services.
Police cleared a two-block area near Congregation Beth Sholom, which also included the area near Congregation Anshey Sfard, an Orthodox congregation. Neither cars nor pedestrians were allowed in the area for nearly two hours. Congregants walking to the Orthodox Anshey Sfard were rerouted around the block to reach their synagogue.
The SFPD bomb squad detonated the device, which was surrounded by “the same paper with the same words” as the bomb that had exploded earlier, Dickson said. “It was the same type of bomb as the other place, including the same timing device.”
The third was discovered mid-afternooon at the home of Rabbi Jacob Traub of Orthodox Congregation Adath Israel in the city’s Sunset District, where a pipe bomb was found in July. Traub’s next door neighbor alerted the family to the suspicious-looking pipe.
Traub, who is Orthodox, contacted Dickson, who said he alerted the neighborhood precinct. Patrolmen from the station “evacuated Traub’s neighbors on both sides and about eight houses across the street” before the bomb squad detonated the third bomb. The three bombs were sent to the Federal Bureau of Investigation for investigation, according to Dickson.
JEWISH INSTITUTIONS UNDER POLICE SURVEILLANCE
Meanwhile, police placed synagogues and Jewish institutions, including the JCF building which houses several organizations, under surveillance. Police officers will be “physically stationed outside all synagogues,” Dickson said, adding the patrols would remain “24 hours a day through Yom Kippur.” Patrols also will be passing rabbis’ homes on a frequent basis.
The latest incidents are believed to be linked to two other pipe bombs found in San Francisco earlier this year, including one at Taub’s congregation, Dickson said. The FBI has yet to complete analysis of the pipe bomb found at Congregation Adath Israel in July, Dickson said, but last Monday’s incidents “will probably expedite analysis this time.” The SFPD was unable to solve other anti-Semitic incidents last year: the defacing of six synagogues, a Jewish day school and five Jewish businesses with anti-Semitic slogans in August, 1984; the desecration of San Francisco’s monument to the Holocaust two days after its dedication in November; and a fire at the headquarters of Jewish rock impressario Bill Graham where a neo-Nazi group claimed responsibility for the blaze.
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