Police are investigating the vandalism of an off-campus Chabad House sukkah at a California university.
Anti-Israel statements including “End Israeli Occupation” and “Free Palestine” were spray-painted on the inside of the sukkah at the University of California, Davis.
Rabbi Shmary Brownstein, co-director of the Chabad House, said in an interview with the California Aggie newspaper on Sunday that a Hillel official notified him of the damage on Oct. 5, the last day of Sukkot. Brownstein said it was the first time In more than four years on campus that he’s had to deal with sukkah vandals.
“This is a sukkah,” he said. “The existence of it is a religious requirement and not a political statement in any way.”
Mike Amerikaner, Hillel’s program director, told the Aggie that anti-Semitism has become a growing problem at Davis, a northern California school with an estimated student population of 30,000, 10 percent of which is Jewish.
“This is not something that’s new,” Amerikaner said. “We’ve been dealing with anti-Semitism on campus for awhile now.”
Another California sukkah, outside of San Jose State University’s Hillel of Silicon Valley, was found torched last week.
