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Jerry McCrea/The Star-Ledger A hole in the window is visible and taped up at the Jerusalem Pizza shop following the vandalism of five Jewish-owned businesses along Raritan Avenue in Highland Park Wednesday. — Of the five businesses that had their storefront windows smashed early Wednesday on the main drag of Highland Park, two sell Jewish religious items, one serves kosher food and another is a pizzeria with 'Jerusalem' in the name. At the end of a day of fear, tension and condemnation from the Anti-Defamation League over vandalism involving businesses targeted 'because of their Jewishness,' a 52-year-old man from New Brunswick was arrested. Green was apprehended on George Street in New Brunswick at 3 p.m.

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And charged with five counts of criminal mischief, Middlesex County Prosecutor Bruce J. 'The preliminary investigation determined that the shops that were targeted are Jewish businesses that trade in such items as clothing, food and religious items, and are owned by Jewish merchants,' Kaplan said in a joint statement with Highland Park police Chief Stephen J.

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'The on-going investigation is seeking to determine if Green is responsible for other acts of criminal mischief that have occurred in the past several days. Upon completion of the investigation, a decision will be made on whether Green will be charged with other incidents, and whether the criminal mischief counts will be upgraded to a bias crime,' the statement said.

Kaplan said no graffiti or offensive symbols or slogans were found. Police also are investigating whether Green was connected to vandalism at the Rutgers University Hillel and Chabad House in New Brunswick. A window was broken on each of those buildings on Sunday night, officials said.

The pre-dawn vandalism spate Wednesday sent ripples through usually quiet Highland Park. The five businesses, all on Raritan Avenue in Highland Park’s tidy business district, were Jerusalem Pizza, the Judaica Gallery gift and religious articles shop, Trio Israeli Gifts, Park Place kosher family restaurant and Jack’s Hardware. In some cases, chunks of asphalt from a sidewalk construction project were used to smash store windows. Avi Reiss, owner of Trio — a religious articles gift shop that has two bay windows ringed by Israeli flags and tinsel Stars of David hanging from a blue-and-white awning — got a call from police at 1:30 a.m. And spent all night cleaning up the damage. 'We live in an ugly world,' Reiss said.

'There’s a lot of bad people out there. It happens to Jewish people, it happens to African people, it happens all over the world.' A block away, Vanessa Shimoni was shaken over the attack on Judaica Gallery, a religious articles shop owned by her husband, a rabbi. 'It’s a shocking thing,' she said. 'You don’t really expect that people will feel comfortable enough to break your window.'

Shimoni was hoping the vandalism was not the work of any group or concerted attack against the community. 'I really hope it’s just some crazy person,' she said. 'You hope it’s just an individual who has some kind of mental problem.' The Anti-Defamation League condemned the vandalism spree. Business owners along Raritan Avenue in Highland Park respond to an overnight vandalism spree that saw five shop windows broken on November 30, 2011. All of the businesses - including two shops specializing in Jewish religious articles - are Jewish owned. The incidents sparked concerns that they may have been motivated by religious hatred.

'We are appalled by the targeting of Jewish stores and Jewish campus institutions at Rutgers,' Lawrence Cooper, ADL New Jersey regional board chair, said in a statement. 'These shocking crimes target the entire Jewish community as these locations appear to have been selected because of their Jewishness.' Owners of some of the vandalized shops refused to immediately label it a bias crime.

'Everything seems to point to a bias crime — I don’t want to jump to that conclusion,' said Rabbi Ed Prince, owner of Jerusalem Pizza, which serves kosher pizza, sushi and falafel. 'There were other Jewish-owned stores that were not hit.' Highland Park Mayor Stephen Nolan said he received a flurry of telephone calls. 'This is very unusual to happen here. We take this very, very seriously,' he said.

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'The police are actively looking into the potential that is a bias crime. At this point, we have no reason to believe there is any continued threat beyond what has happened.' Staff writers Sue Epstein, Mike Frassinelli, Mark Di Ionno and Brian Donohue contributed to this report.

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