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Jewish community leaders said the punishment for a 17-year-old boy who beat a Jewish man near Rabbi Jacob Joseph Yeshiva in Edison on Rosh Hashanah, consisting of a $630 fine and a 500-word essay on the effects of anti-Semitism, is insufficient.

Following a one-day trial in juvenile court in New Brunswick, the 17-year-old with initials M.K. was convicted of third degree aggravated assault and second degree bias intimidation, the Middlesex County Prosecutor's Office announced Jan. 26.

On the second night of Rosh Hashanah Sept. 19, the boy (age 16 at the time) punched the 19-year-old man in the head, and the victim suffered an eye laceration. Judge Roger W. Daley placed the boy on probation for one year, with the fine representing compensation for the victim's medical co-payments, broken eye glasses, and the cost of cleaning the religious garb he was wearing when beaten, the Prosecutor's Office said.

Etzion Neuer, regional director for the Anti-Defamation League's New Jersey Region, said the juvenile court system focuses on rehabilitation rather than being punitive, but nevertheless, the boy's punishment fell short of teaching him a real lesson.

"This is a serious crime, and the judges' recommendations don't even look like a slap on the wrist," Neuer told The Jewish State. "It seems almost like a timeout."

Neuer said the Prosecutor's Office initially recommended that the boy participate in a program operated by Brookdale Community College's Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights Education Center, as well as the Monmouth County Prosecutor's Office, that educates bias crime offenders on the implications of what they did. It's not unusual for Middlesex County to refer locals to the Monmouth County program, Neuer said, but for whatever reason that didn't end up happening in this case.

Rather than an essay, which the boy can easily copy off the Internet, more appropriate punishments would have been community service, a trip to the Holocaust exhibits of the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York, or face-to-face meetings with Holocaust survivors, Rabbi Dr. Bernhard Rosenberg of Congregation Beth-El in Edison said.

The $630 fine is also insufficient, Rosenberg said, because it doesn't include compensation for the man's pain and suffering or a serious financial penalty for the boy's parents. Therefore, the message of this ruling to juveniles is that "you can do whatever you want, because the verdict is going to be light and you aren't going to jail," he said.

"I'm appalled," Rosenberg said. "This gives license to any teenager who wants to beat up an individual for bias reasons."

"I don't see any deterrent," he said. "This kid needs to understand what he did. You don't beat people up because they don't look like you."

Neuer said making the boy perform community service would have been "easier said than done" because Jewish organizations, or other religious and community groups, are reluctant to work with individuals who have committed violent crimes.

"I think you have to be very careful when it comes to people who have shown a propensity for violence," he said.

The boy was initially charged with juvenile delinquency in the aggravated assault following his arrest, and the bias intimidation count was added Oct. 2 after an investigation by Sgt. John Rodriguez of the Prosecutor's Office's Bias Crimes Unit. The Edison Police Department also filed a bias incident report with the New Jersey Office of the Attorney General.

During the trial, Middlesex County Assistant Prosecutor Ralph Cretella presented evidence and testimony showing that the defendant punched the man because of his religious beliefs, the Prosecutor's Office said. Jim O'Neill, a spokesman for the office, said Cretella wasn't comfortable with releasing any further details about the evidence.

Even though the defendant was a juvenile, Neuer said the ADL likes "to see that the adjudication be as severe as possible, and this decision falls short of that."