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Menorahs across the US are vandalized as Jewish communities celebrate Hanukkah amid a spike in antisemitism
(JTA) — In Oakland, California, an 11-foot tall Hanukkah menorah was broken and thrown into a lake. In New Haven, Connecticut, a Palestinian flag was planted in a publicly displayed menorah. In Juno Beach, Florida, a menorah made of sand was destroyed.
As Jewish communities around the United States celebrated Hanukkah over the past week, numerous stories of vandalism and destruction circulated online as public menorahs — many of them sponsored by local outposts of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement — were targeted. Some of the incidents are being investigated as hate crimes.
The acts of vandalism come at a time when Jewish communities are on high alert as watchdogs say antisemitism has spiked around the globe since Oct. 7, when the Israel-Hamas war began. Many communities had planned gatherings explicitly drawing connections between the war and the Hanukkah holiday, which began Dec. 7 and concludes on Friday. In response to the uptick in antisemitism and fear, one Jewish father launched an online campaign encouraging non-Jews to display menorahs in their windows out of solidarity.
For decades, public menorah lightings have been commonplace in many cities around the United States, especially in ceremonies led by local Chabad rabbis. The Hasidic movement organized an estimated 15,000 lightings annually in recent years, and this Hanukkah it puts the number at more than 10% higher — an increase Chabad spokesman Rabbi Motti Seligson attributed in part to the war in Israel and Gaza.
“Jews from across the spectrum of observance are celebrating Hanukkah more visibly this year than ever before,” Seligson said. “They feel they don’t have a choice. It’s in response to Oct. 7.”
Boruch Klar, who runs Menorah.net, which bills itself as the “world’s largest manufacturer of public display menorahs,” said his company’s sales have steadily increased every year, 2023 included. He noted that the company’s sales to municipal and state offices, mostly in the United States, have increased 150% this year.
“The numbers are so high that I can’t actually believe it,” said Klar, a Chabad rabbi who sells menorahs as tall as 12 feet to army bases, shopping malls, sports teams and beyond. He said he sells thousands of menorahs each year but declined to give exact sales numbers.
The prevalence and size of public menorahs makes them easy targets for people seeking to vandalize Jewish property or just cause mischief. And since the holiday began, several incidents of vandalism and destruction of menorahs have been reported around the country — though not, Seligson said, at an appreciably higher rate than in the past.
“Hanukkah came as the perfect antidote to the adversity and the darkness,” Seligson said, noting that Chabad is not formally tracking vandalism incidents. “In the sum total, we’re seeing a lot more light.”
Still, the incidents of vandalism have been jarring to Jewish communities already on edge.
In Oakland, Chabad had assembled a 350-pound menorah that was displayed on a walking trail at the city’s Lake Merritt. Chabad hosted a candle lighting ceremony on Sunday, the fourth night of the holiday, featuring remarks from Mayor Sheng Thao.
On Wednesday morning, Rabbi Dovid Labkowski received text messages saying the menorah had been destroyed. He called the mayor’s office and rushed to the scene, he told J. The Jewish News of Northern California.
Pieces of the menorah had been cut up and thrown across the sidewalk and into the lake. Antisemitic graffiti was scrawled onto the base, including “we’re gonna find you” and “you’re on alert.” “Free Palestine” was written in Arabic near where the menorah had stood. Oakland police are investigating the incident as a hate crime.
“I felt outraged,” Labkowski told the J. “There’s crime in this city, but it just hit a new level of antisemitism. Together with the crime — it just makes you feel hopeless.”
On Wednesday, a large interfaith crowd gathered to light a new menorah and show support for the local Jewish community.
In New Haven, a pro-Palestinian protester climbed the city’s 30-foot menorah and planted a Palestinian flag between the candles. The menorah was not damaged, but local authorities are investigating the incident, which was caught on camera.
The Jewish Community Synagogue in North Palm Beach had commissioned an artist to create a menorah out of sand in Juno Beach — which was destroyed and defaced with a swastika. After the incident, which is under investigation, the local Jewish community gathered to rededicate the menorah, which was rebuilt.
Menorahs were also vandalized in the Washington, D.C. suburb of Olney, Maryland, the Chicago neighborhood of Lakeview and suburb of Northbrook, as well as in Brooklyn, where two public menorahs were damaged. The two Brooklyn incidents are being investigated as hate crimes, according to the NYPD.
Public menorahs have also been the scenes of dramatic incidents in Europe. In Poland, a far-right member of parliament shocked the chamber when he used a fire extinguisher to blow out the candles of a menorah in the government building. In the Dutch town of Enschede, the mayor refused to be seen with the Netherlands’ Israeli ambassador at a Hanukkah event. And a public menorah was found toppled in West Hempstead, London, on Thursday morning, with a “Free Palestine” sticker affixed to its base.
Rabbi Dovid Katz of the West Hampstead Chabad told the Jewish Chronicle of London that next year he would put up four at the same intersection.
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The post Menorahs across the US are vandalized as Jewish communities celebrate Hanukkah amid a spike in antisemitism appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Treasure Trove explores the curious case of a stamp from an imaginary land
This 1 V. postage revenue stamp from West Refaim was postmarked in Virikoso in South Giantsland 100 years ago. Problem is—none of these places ever existed. There is a second […]
The post Treasure Trove explores the curious case of a stamp from an imaginary land appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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Israel Has Told ICC It Will Contest Arrest Warrants, Netanyahu Says
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant during a press conference in the Kirya military base in Tel Aviv, Israel, Oct. 28, 2023. Photo: ABIR SULTAN POOL/Pool via REUTERS
Israel has informed the International Criminal Court that it will contest arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister Yoav Gallant over their conduct of the Gaza war, Netanyahu’s office said on Wednesday.
The office also said that US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham had updated Netanyahu “on a series of measures he is promoting in the US Congress against the International Criminal Court and against countries that would cooperate with it.”
The ICC issued arrest warrants last Thursday for Netanyahu, Gallant, and Hamas leader Ibrahim Al-Masri, known as Mohammed Deif, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza conflict.
The move comes after the ICC prosecutor Karim Khan announced on May 20 that he was seeking arrest warrants for alleged crimes connected to the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas and the Israeli military response in Gaza.
Israel has rejected the jurisdiction of the Hague-based court and denies war crimes in Gaza.
“Israel today submitted a notice to the International Criminal Court of its intention to appeal to the court, along with a demand to delay the execution of the arrest warrants,” Netanyahu’s office said.
Court spokesperson Fadi El Abdallah told journalists that if requests for an appeal were submitted it would be up to the judges to decide
The court’s rules allow for the UN Security Council to adopt a resolution that would pause or defer an investigation or a prosecution for a year, with the possibility of renewing that annually.
After a warrant is issued the country involved or a person named in an arrest warrant can also issue a challenge to the jurisdiction of the court or the admissibility of the case.
The post Israel Has Told ICC It Will Contest Arrest Warrants, Netanyahu Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Jewish Girls Attacked in London With Glass Bottles in Antisemitic Outrage
Shomrim officers at the scene of a hate crime in London in which Jewish girls were struck with glass bottles. Photo: Shomrim Stamford Hill/Screenshot
A group of young Jewish girls were the victims of an “abhorrent hate crime” when a man hurled glass bottles at them from a balcony as they were walking through the Stamford Hill section of London on Monday evening.
One of the girls was struck in the head and rushed to the hospital with serious but non-life threatening injuries, according to local law enforcement.
A spokesperson for London’s Metropolitan Police said officers were called to the Woodberry Down Estate in the city’s borough of Hackney following reports of an assault on Monday evening at 7:44 pm local time.
“A group of schoolgirls had been walking through the estate when a bottle was thrown from the upper floor of a building,” the spokesperson said. “A 16-year-old girl was struck on the head and was taken to hospital. Her injuries have since been assessed as non-life changing.”
Police noted they were unable to locate the suspect and an investigation is ongoing before adding, “The incident is being treated as a potential antisemitic hate crime.”
Following the incident, Shomrim, a Jewish organization that monitors antisemitism and serves as a neighborhood watch group, reported that the girls were en route to a rehearsal for an upcoming event. The community, the group added, was “shocked” by the attack on “innocent young Jewish girls,” calling it an “abhorrent hate crime.”
14-year-old girl rushed to Hospital with head & facial injuries following an attack in #StamfordHill.
Young Jewish girls on their way to a rehearsal were pelted with glass bottles by a male on a balcony at Woodberry Down Estate N4.
This… pic.twitter.com/MzHPHusgyX
— Shomrim (London North & East) (@Shomrim) November 26, 2024
Since then, another Jewish girl, age 14, has reported being pelted with a hard object which caused her to be “knocked unconscious, and left feeling dizzy and with a bump on her head,” according to Shomrim.
Monday’s crime was one among many which have targeted London Jews in recent years, an issue The Algemeiner has reported on extensively.
Last December, an Orthodox Jewish man was assaulted by a man riding a bicycle on the sidewalk, two attackers brutally mauled a Jewish woman, and a group of Jewish children was berated by a woman who screamed “I’ll kill all of you Jews. You are murderers!” A similar incident occurred when a man confronted a Jewish shopper and shouted, “You f—king Jew, I will kill you!”
Months prior, a perpetrator stalked and assaulted an Orthodox Jewish woman. He followed her, shouting “dirty Jew” before snatching her shopping bag and “spilling her shopping onto the pavement whilst laughing.” That incident followed a woman wielding a wooden stick approaching a Jewish woman near the Seven Sisters area and declaring “I am doing it because you are Jew,” while striking her over the head and pouring liquid on her. The next day, the same woman — described by an eyewitness as a “serial racist” — chased a mother and her baby with a wooden stick after spraying liquid on the baby. That same week, three people accosted a Jewish teenager and knocked his hat off his head while yelling “f—king Jew.”
According to an Algemeiner review of Metropolitan Police Service data, 2,383 antisemitic hate crimes occurred in London between October 2023 and October 2024, eclipsing the full-year totals of 550 in 2022 and 845 in 2021. The problem is so serious that city officials created a new bus route to help Jewish residents “feel safe” when they travel.
“Jewish Londoners have felt scared to leave their homes,” London Mayor Sadiq Khan told The Jewish Chronicle in a statement about the policy decision earlier this year. “So, this direct bus link between these two significant communities [Stamford Hill in Hackney and Golders Green in Barnet, areas with two of the biggest Jewish communities in London] means you can travel on the 310, not need to change, and be safe and feel safer. I hope that will lead to more Londoners from these communities using public transport safely.”
Khan added that the route “connects communities, connects congregations” and would reassure Jewish Londoners they would be “safe when they travel between these two communities.”
However, it doesn’t solve the problem at hand — an explosion of antisemitism unlike anything seen in the Western world since World War II. Just this week, according to a story by GB News, an unknown group scattered leaflets across the streets of London which threatened that “every Zionist needs to leave Britain or be slaughtered.”
Responding to this latest incident, the director of the Jewish civil rights group StandWithUs UK Isaaz Zarfati told GB News that the comments should be taken “seriously.”
“We are witnessing a troubling trend of red lines being repeatedly crossed,” he said. “This is not just another wave that will pass if we remain passive. We must take those threats and statement seriously because they will one day turn into actions, and decisive steps are needed to combat this alarming phenomenon.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Jewish Girls Attacked in London With Glass Bottles in Antisemitic Outrage first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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