Police investigate vandalism at Jewish community building in Northeast Philly

Detectives are trying to figure out who vandalized a holy site in a shopping center. Some neighbors are uneasy tonight wondering if an anti-semitic motive could be behind it all.

"It's a special holy place and it's used for religious reasons only."

Rabbi Solomon Isaacson showed FOX 29 the graffiti on a Jewish community building in Northeast Philadelphia's Somerton section.

The vandalism is believed to have taken place over the weekend. The rabbi says the graffiti took place on precious stones imported from Jerusalem. The building itself is known as a "Mikvah", which is where ritual baths are being constructed.

This defacing comes more than a week after someone smashed the windows of this Jewish Temple with rocks in Tacony.

But is this a hate crime?

"It could be only because I think because this was the only building in the entire shopping center that was vandalized so," said the rabbi.

Police are still investigating but say they don't have surveillance of the incident. Several cameras in the strip mall off of Rennard were damaged in recent days.

The last working images show a man shooting a camera with a paintball gun.

Another shows someone yanking the camera from its post. All before the graffiti happened.

"Emotionally it's unspeakable, its unbearable that it's going on in our community," the rabbit explained.

Rabbi Isaacson has a message for the person responsible.

"If this was done discriminately, try to learn a little bit about what Judaism is and what the Jewish people are and maybe you'll feel differently if you did this as an anti-semitic gesture."