By LORRAINE SWANSON, Chicago Journal
Police in the 24th District aren’t saying much about a crime spree against Jewish schools and religious centers that occurred in West Ridge last weekend.
Sometime during the early morning hours of Jan. 10, vandals spray-painted anti-Israel graffiti and busted windows at two Jewish Orthodox high schools and two synagogues. The acts have been designated as hate crimes, according to 24th District police reports.
The hate crimes in West Ridge follow on the heels of a similar attack on Temple Sholom in Lake View a few weeks ago. A witness reported seeing someone throwing a Molotov cocktail from a car and shouting an ethnic slur at a passerby around 2 a.m. Dec. 29, according to a Chicago Police Department spokesman.
The most recent spate of vandalism against Jewish religious centers comes just weeks after Israeli air strikes began in Gaza, which were purportedly launched in response to Hamas breaching a cease-fire agreement by firing rockets into Israel. Similar assaults against Jewish communities have been reported worldwide.
Shortly after midnight on Jan. 10, police discovered the words “Death to Israel” spray-painted on a sign in front of Hanna Sacks Bais Yaakov High School, an Orthodox girls’ school at 3201 W. Devon.
Around 4:40 a.m., security cameras filmed three men, two of them wearing masks and a third acting as a look-out, spray-painting the same inflammatory slogan on the western wall of Lubavitch Boys High School at 2756 W. Morse. The vandals also threw a rock three times at the school’s front door, until it broke the glass.
Police were unable to contact the rabbi at Anshe Motele Congregation, when they drove past the temple at 6520 N. California and saw the same anti-Israel graffiti spray-painted on the front of the temple.
The fourth incident was reported at 8:30 a.m., when a member of Congregation Young Israel of West Rogers Park, at 2706 W. Touhy, flagged down police and reported two bricks being thrown through a glass door. Congregation members had already cleaned up the glass, but the bricks that were used to break the door remained inside the storefront temple.
The Lincolnwood Jewish Congregation outside the Chicago city limits also reported its glass windows and doors shattered by two men in ski masks early Saturday morning.
Orange spray paint was used in each incident where anti-Israel graffiti was reported. All of the incidents occurred in West Ridge, where many of the neighborhood’s Orthodox Jews reside.
Sources at the 24th District would not confirm whether the Rogers Park synagogues and Jewish schools were under a special watch as a result of Israeli air strikes in Gaza.
By Monday afternoon, the city’s graffiti busters had cleaned up the paint from two of the locations, but the sign in front of Hanna Sacks remained defaced.
Students at Lubavitch, which caters to high school-aged boys training for rabbinical careers, crowded around the cracked front door of the school on Monday.
Rabbi Shalom Halberstam, principal at Lubavitch, said that students and faculty discovered the vandalism when they showed up for Sabbath prayers and classes around 8:30 a.m. Saturday. Students were upset that their school had been targeted in a hate crime.
“We don’t get fazed, we only move forward,” Halberstam said. “We kept our regular study and prayers. We try to teach our students kindness and goodness, and to act like human beings and law abiding citizens. We hope everyone else does the same.”
Halberstam said that the school did not receive any threats prior to the school being defaced last Saturday. Although aware of the other incidents, he hasn’t been in contact with the other school and temples that were targeted last weekend.
“We’re taking the necessary precautionary measures and are working with local authorities,” Halberstam said.
