Toppled tombstones were discovered at a Jewish cemetery in Philadelphia Tuesday, sparking a police investigation and invoking images of similar acts of vandalism across the country earlier this year.
Philadelphia Police told HuffPost there’s no immediate indication that anti-Semitism was at play after a groundskeeper at Adath Jeshurun Cemetery found five headstones knocked over. The incident is under investigation but not as a hate crime.
While a motive is unclear, however, the incident comes after a short lull in a string of similar acts targeting Jewish organizations across the country this year.
This very community in Philadelphia has been a victim of such attacks before. In late February, dozens of gravestones were found toppled and broken at Mount Carmel Cemetery, which sits nearly adjacent to Adath Jeshurun. Days prior, vandals damaged at least 100 headstones at Chesed Shel Emeth Cemetery in St. Louis. Another 16 were knocked down in upstate New York in March.
Meanwhile, hundreds of bomb threats were being called into Jewish community centers all over the country. The calls hit in waves, starting in January, and subsided in March after police arrested a suspect in the case, 18-year-old Michael Ron David Kadar. The Justice Department slapped him with federal charges in April.
Representatives at Adath Jeshurun Cemetery didn’t immediately return calls for comment on this story.