Hanukkah Cookies, 30 Frightened Nights and a Stolen Flag
Warwick. Shannon Cheevers, baker and owner of Shannon's Eyes on the Pies in Warwick, and Temple Beth El in Monroe have faced challenging behavior lately.
For Warwick baker Shannon Cheevers, thirty nights of living by the light of a night light somehow resulted from baking batches of star-shaped sugar cookies, dipped in chocolate and blue sprinkles for Hanukkah. Owner of Shannon’s Eyes on the Pies, Cheevers posted a photo of the cookies online. Soon afterward, on Dec. 17, a friend came by to tell her about anti-semitic slurs and death threats proliferating on a Warwick Facebook page. By that time, the page administrator had deleted them, but hundreds of insults, threatening posts and private messages showed up on her own page and continued to appear daily, she said.
“I couldn’t believe what was happening. I’ve had this bakery for seven years. I bake for all the holidays, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Passover, Saint Patrick’s Day, all of them.”
She was born in West Milford and has lived in the area for most of her life, participating in community life in various ways, for instance helping build a community playground, she said.
She called Warwick police.
“He said I’d have to come in to file a complaint,” Cheevers said of the police dispatcher. “But I was afraid to get in the car. I was afraid someone would follow me.”
She couldn’t leave her shop while it was open, from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., especially during the busy holiday season, and then she worked until 11 p.m., she told the dispatcher. She had no one to cover for her, and by the time she left, it was late and dark.
“We’re here 24/7,” she recalled the dispatcher saying. “I was frightened. I locked the back door. When I came home, I turned off the lights except for the night light. I didn’t want to be seen through the windows. I asked friends to come and stay with me when they could.”
Channel 12 did a story about the threats, showing the slurs and cookies. People posted complimentary comments and challenged the negative ones. Customers mentioned the offensive posts when they came to the shop. State Senator James Skoufis called to give his support and also his phone number, should Cheevers need assistance.
“Jonah Mandelbaum came in and said he wanted to buy the rest of the Hanukkah cookies,” Cheevers said, referring to the local developer of affordable housing.
But threatening posts and slurs, along with personal messages, continued on the bakery’s Facebook page.
Asked last week in an email about the necessity of going to the police department to file a complaint, Town of Warwick Police Chief John Rader described the dispatcher’s response to Cheevers’ call as a “"miscommunication.”
“The policy for filing a complaint that will require an investigation is that it should be in person. Either by coming to the police station to fill out a report or for an officer to respond to the complainant's business or residence,” Rader wrote. “In this particular case there was a miscommunication between the dispatcher and the complainant as far as how the report was going to be taken. We are not currently investigating this incident because a report was not taken. I have been in touch with Shannon Cheevers and outlined the options for going forward. I have no other information at this time.”
Cheevers said that Rader had come to the bakery soon after the Lookout inquiry and assured her that police officers patrol the area and could be relied on to come to homes and businesses to take reports when necessary. After his visit last week, she said she felt safe enough to turn on lights when she went home, although threats and slurs continued.
Meanwhile, in Monroe, an Israeli flag was pulled down on Dec. 30 by a late night intruder at Temple Beth El, a reformed Judaism synagogue, Rabbi Roger Lerner said. A video showed a man reaching up to remove the flag at 10 p.m. that night.
Rabbi Roger Lerner
The flag had been put up at the synagogue entrance, about seven or eight feet up, on Oct. 8, after the Hamas attack in Israel on Oct. 7. Lerner said he had stopped by the Village of Monroe police department to report the incident, and they are investigating.
Asked about escalation of anti-semitism, Lerner said, “The police say they haven’t seen much criminal anti-semitism. I haven’t seen much locally. Students report incidents in the middle school and high school. and schools try to do something about it. We have security for congregation members. The Satmar community gets online hate comments—whether because of what they do or because of anti-semitism, I don’t know. There are reasons to be upset, but it’s sad that it evolves into anti-semitism.”
Nevertheless, Shannon Cheevers continues to make Hanukkah cookies, chocolate linzer tart and sugar cookies with chocolate and blue sprinkles.
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