(JTA) — A large plate glass window was shattered in the front of a Chabad synagogue in Brooklyn as a family sat around their Shabbat table.
The window was smashed on Friday night. The Chabad rabbi, Menachem Heller, his wife, and nine children were in the Chabad of Bushwick at the time of the attack. The family stays in the building over Shabbat.
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 eventually 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.”
Police 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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