A year ago, local teenagers sprayed hateful graffiti on synagogue walls and defaced pictures of rabbis. They had painted swastikas on a cooler, on a table. They scrawled Hitler’s name in lurid yellow across a cooler door. A year later, on the eve of Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, the White Rock bungalow colony is renewed.

Kids from the colony planted new shrubs at the entry. They created a rock garden and painted some of the rocks white. They put in a new play area. They planted flowers. They picked up trash along Southwoods Drive near the colony.

“Just to add some color and make things look pretty,” said Shoshana Mermelstein, White Rock’s owner. “And of course, we had a lot of painting and repair to do.”

The project, funded in part by Sullivan Renaissance, was more than decoration.

They erased the ugliness that had been done and reclaimed their summer home as a country haven once again. As Jewish people tonight at sundown celebrate the start of a new year, the cleanup will help the colony start anew.

The kids went up and down the road, too, cleaning up trash, Mermelstein said.

For a couple of years, White Rock has participated in Renaissance’s seasonal program.

“When we heard about the vandalism and what happened to them, we reached out to them,” said Glenn Pontier, Renaissance’s program director. The vandals, he said, were “clearly kids that were acting out,” but the graffiti also suggested darker motives.

Renaissance’s mission is to beautify the county.

“And here was an opportunity for a camp that needed some renewal and community support in another way, because it’s been desecrated,” Pontier said. “We saw the coming together of renaissance and renewal.”

Mermelstein, who bought the flowers and organized White Rock’s project, was touched by the good will that Renaissance offered and by the colony teenagers’ work.

“The kids joined together, and they planted, and they did a beautiful rock garden,” she said. “Definitely, it should serve as a peace garden. Everybody should just be happy together as neighbors.”

ROL