The killing last June of a security guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. by a longtime neo-Nazi proved to the world that hate violence, in particular, anti-Semitism, is far from dead in America. Then again, all one needs to do is look at the FBI annual hate crime statistics to know that in the 20 years the agency has been collecting this data, bias-motivated crimes happen in this country at the rate of one an hour. 

Last November, the Jewish Light received a grant from the Press Club of Metropolitan St. Louis to study hate violence and its affects not just among Jews, but also other groups protected by the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which was signed into law last October. This legislation, named after two victims of bias-motivated crimes, expanded the 1969 U.S federal hate-crime law to include crimes motivated by a victim’s gender, sexual orientation or disability. The earlier act protects victims targeted because of their race, religion or ethnicity, but only if they were engaged in a federally protected activity, like voting or going to school. The new law removed that stipulation.

In the past six months the Light has spoken to dozens of agencies and individuals who track and investigate hate crimes as well as to victims and perpetrators of bias-motivated violence. The results of these interviews and others is the foundation of “The Faces of Hate,” a special section of articles that will appear in the May 26th newspaper and on the Light’s website at www.stljewishlight.com.

To preview the section, go to the paper’s website today to watch a video interview with Rick Kalina, now 45, whose bar mitzvah at Brith Sholom Kneseth Israel on Oct. 8, 1977 was marred by a sniper attack from a anti-Semite white supremacist who wanted to kill Jews. The attack left one guest dead and two others wounded and the Jewish community in St. Louis in a quandary over what happened.