Tallit-Wearing Man Smashes Wall Street Bull Statue With Banjo
A man who appeared to be wearing a tallit, a Jewish prayer shawl, was arrested Saturday after allegedly smashing the iconic Charging Bull statue in New York’s financial district.
Tevon Varlack of Dallas was arrested after allegedly damaging the bronze statue by repeatedly thwacking it with a banjo, ArtNet reported. Varlack was reportedly wearing a t-shirt with the words “Let Us Not Forget The Ten Commandments,” leading some to wonder whether the action had anything to do with Moses’s destruction of the Golden Calf statue in the Bible.
Varlack was charged with criminal mischief, disorderly conduct, and criminal possession of a weapon (apparently a reference to the banjo), and was released on bail but told to stay away from city landmarks, according to ArtNet.
Varlack also repeatedly yelled “F—- Donald Trump” during his alleged attack on the bronze beast, the New York Daily News reported. The bull was left with a hole in its right horn and several scratches.
The Charging Bull statue has been a symbol of New York’s financial sector since its installation in 1989, and drew new attention after another sculptor placed her own “Fearless Girl” statue in front of it.
BREAKING: Photos show man as he defaced iconic charging bull statue in Financial District. @PIX11News #NewYork #NYC pic.twitter.com/iIzQ9tVQVs
— Cristian Benavides (@cbenavidesTV) September 7, 2019
Aiden Pink is the deputy news editor of the Forward. Contact him at pink@forward.com or follow him on Twitter @aidenpink
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO