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Saturday, January 1, 2011

Hate Campaign Targets a Dozen Synagogues,

Congregation Ohab Zedek on the Upper West Side was sent a threatening letter on Thursday.















A frightening letter was sent to an Upper West Side synagogue threatening to blow it up on New Year's Eve -- and the rabbi there says as many as a dozen other local synagogues received similar sinister missives.

The note was discovered at 5 p.m. Thursday at the Congregation Ohab Zedek synagogue on 95th Street near Columbus Avenue, said Rabbi Allen Schwartz.

"We have reasons to believe someone wants to spread fear," Schwartz told The Post.

"It was a letter sent to 10 or 12 [other] synagogues," he added.

He declined to elaborate, citing a police investigation.

Authorities said they're investigating the letter sent to Schwartz's synagogue but were unable to confirm whether bomb threats had been made to other synagogues.

The bomb threat to Ohab Zedek was made the same day a report was released by the state Division of Criminal Justice Services showing that hate crimes across the state had jumped 14 percent in 2009.

In the city, hate crimes rose 6 percent in the same period, with Manhattan having the second-highest number of incidents at 70.

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