Synagogue Window Smashed On Shabbat In Latest Attack Targeting Brooklyn Jews
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(JTA) — New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that Brooklyn synagogues will receive more security after an attack on a Chabad synagogue on Friday night.
“The NYPD is adding security to this synagogue and others nearby,” the mayor said Sunday in a tweet which linked to a local article about the attack on the Chabad of Bushwick. “If you know anything about this incident, contact them immediately. New York City stands for tolerance and we will arrest anyone involved in anti-Semitic crimes. Attacks like this must stop,” the tweet also said.
The large plate glass window in the Chabad building was smashed by vandals as Rabbi Menachem Heller, his wife, and nine children say around the Shabbat table on Friday night.
The rabbi walked across the street and asked some people to call 911 since they do not use their phones on the Jewish Sabbath, NBC New York reported. He then flagged down a police car.
The family saw two people walking away from the front of the building right after the window was smashed, according to the report.
“We face this unfortunate experience not with discouragement, but with solid determination: to continue celebrating our faith, sharing our rich heritage, and offering our culture in an inclusive and warm environment,” Heller wrote Saturday night in a post on Facebook. “At the same time, we acknowledge the disturbing and increasingly frequent incidents of hate and prejudice in our New York community and its destructive and divisive effects, especially on young people. We encourage each other and the public to stand up against it, whenever it occurs, whatever form it takes, and towards whomever it is directed. An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us.”
In recent weeks there have been several attacks on identifiable Jewish men in Brooklyn.
The New York Police Department investigated 42 hate crimes through Feb. 4, compared with 19 at the same date last year. Most of those were anti-Semitic hate crimes, according to NBC NY.
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