NJ man who firebombed rabbi’s home convicted of terrorism

A 24-year-old New Jersey man was found guilty of terrorism for vandalizing Jewish temples and firebombing a rabbi’s residence four years ago.

Anthony Graziano of Lodi was convicted on May 27 of terrorism — the most serious offense — and 19 other charges. He faces 30 years to life in prison on the terrorism charge alone when he is sentenced on July 22. 

It was the first case in Bergen County to employ a post-9/11 terrorism law that required the finding that five or more people were terrorized by the crime or that the acts were carried out to promote terror, according to NorthJersey.com.

Authorities say Graziano and a childhood friend, Akash Dalal, who will be tried separately, spray-painted anti-Semitic messages outside Temple Beth Israel in Maywood and Temple Beth El in Hackensack in December 2011. On Jan. 3, 2012, they tried to set Temple Khal Adath Jeshurun in Paramus on fire, authorities said.

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Four days later, Graziano abandoned a plot to throw Molotov cocktails into the Jewish Community Center synagogue in Paramus when a police car drove by.

The attacks culminated, prosecutors said, with the Jan. 11, 2012, firebombing of Rabbi Neil Schuman’s Rutherford residence — where he, his wife, their five children, his father, and her mother were sleeping — in an attempt to burn down the adjacent Congregation Beth El.