West Orange police continued to investigate today an explosion which rocked the West Orange Jewish Center Saturday night and inflicted extensive damage on the 500-member Conservative synagogue. The blast, which shattered windows, damaged structural beams, tore the doors apart and cracked the air conditioning unit, was touched off the night that JDL national chairman Rabbi Meir Kahane had been scheduled to address a meeting at the building. According to the synagogue’s spiritual leader, Rabbi Harold Mozeson, several placards had been pasted in the town announcing the JDL leader’s appearance on the night of the explosion. The date however, Rabbi Mozeson stated, had been changed to May 2 and the posters were not corrected. Although Rabbi Mozeson declined to link the blast with Rabbi Kahane’s appearance, he did not that it was a “strange coincidence.” He disclosed that he and his congregants had agreed at a meeting yesterday afternoon that “Rabbi Kahane’s invitation for May 2 still stands,” and that the congregants weren’t “going to make our decision subject to this kind of hooliganism.” He dismissed the possibility that members of the Ku Klux Klan, who have stirred up trouble in Highstown, N.J., were involved in the bombing. Rabbi Mozeson told the JTA that Rabbi Kahane’s appearance would be the first in this North Jersey town, although he had addressed a meeting in a neighboring community, Livingston, without incident.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
