Santa Monica Synagogue Smeared with Feces on Hanukkah

On the first day of Hanukkah, December 25, Chabad Rabbi Boruch Rabinowitz discovered that the front window of his Santa Monica synagogue, near the menorah display, had been smeared with feces and rice, the LA Times reported. The repulsive act of vandalism, carried out overnight Sunday, did not feature anti-Semitic messages, but, of course, a repugnant picture is worth a thousand words.

At the Chabad Living Torah Center on Wilshire Boulevard they suspect this was a full blown anti-Semitic act.

“This seems kind of intentional,” Assistant Rabbi Dovid Tenenbaum told the LAT Sunday morning. “With a religious artifact in the window, we have to assume so.”

Rabbi Rabinowitz, who arrived at the synagogue shortly before 8 AM Sunday, alerted the Santa Monica police came and recorded the incident, but so far there are no witnesses to the crime. Now the synagogue is going to install a security camera.

The Rabbi told KXXY TV he feels this was a targeted hate crime, since the rest of businesses on the street had not been vandalized, and then there’s the timing, at the start of Hanukkah.

“It’s so sad that at this time people should feel that they want to express themselves in such a negative way,” he said.

According to the LAT, there have been a few anti-Semitic incidents at the Chabad synagogue. A month ago, during services, a man stood up outside, raised his arm and shouted “Heil, Hitler,” but he ran away before the Jews inside could catch him. And a year ago, a letter was dropped in the synagogue mailbox, adorned with a swastika, which read: “Get out of here, you Jews.” And a year and a half ago, on Sukkot, an anti-Semitic graffiti was scrawled on the synagogue’s Sukkah. And years ago a big cross was etched on the synagogue’s front window.

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Source: Israel in the News