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Police investigate reason rabbi's SUV set ablaze

ATLANTIC CITY - Police investigators continued Tuesday to comb through ashes and scorch marks left in a parking lot where an SUV belonging to a rabbi was torched last Wednesday night after he parked it before conducting Rosh Hashanah services at the adjacent Rodef Sholom Orthodox Synagogue.

ATLANTIC CITY - Police investigators continued Tuesday to comb through ashes and scorch marks left in a parking lot where an SUV belonging to a rabbi was torched last Wednesday night after he parked it before conducting Rosh Hashanah services at the adjacent Rodef Sholom Orthodox Synagogue.

Rabbi David Kushner said that while it was unclear whether the case was specifically a hate crime, it is being investigated as a "suspicious" fire by police. Police declined to comment on the case and have not released an official report on it.

"Until the police finish their investigation, it is impossible to know what the motive was, what was going through somebody's mind," said Kushner, of Philadelphia's Rhawnhurst section, who recently became Rodef Sholom's rabbi. "Whether the synagogue, or the Jewish community, is a target is unclear . . . but that it happened on the first night of the High Holy Days leaves us with a lot of questions."

Kushner said he parked his Ford Explorer in the synagogue's lot before services Wednesday night, and when he returned Thursday morning, he found that the burned-out vehicle had already been towed by authorities. Besides the vehicle's being a total loss, Kushner said, he lost equipment that he uses as a volunteer EMT in Monmouth County and other valuables.

Bruce Ostrow, president of Rodef Sholom, which was established in 1896 and is one of the oldest synagogues in the region, said the incident has shaken its members, a mostly older congregation comprised of many Holocaust survivors. The synagogue is in the 4600 block of Atlantic Avenue.

"To have this happen during the Holy Days has certainly raised a lot of emotions," said Ostrow, who noted that investigators had spent most of the day at the parking lot Tuesday examining the skid marks, ashes, and general scene.

Kushner said that while the blaze does not leave him with fear about leading the congregation in Atlantic City, it does create a "tremendous feeling of sadness."

"Hatred has always existed among people, but we once lived in a time when such hatred may have been thought in the mind or once in a while expressed on the lips. But the sad reality is that now we live in a time of ISIS and beheadings, and there is a tremendous amount of physical expression of such hatred in the world today," Kushner said.

The Southern Poverty Law Center says the number of hate groups operating in the United States has continued to rise over the last two decades, and range in membership size from a handful of members to tens of thousands.