Shul vandalized
B’klyn smash & dash
A rabbi is looking for answers after two vandals smashed the window of his Brooklyn synagogue during a Shabbos dinner.
Rabbi Menachem Heller, 39, was inside Chabad of Bushwick — the synagogue he runs on Flushing Avenue — with more than a dozen other people, including children, at around 2 a.m. Saturday when he heard “a really loud boom.”
“We do a Shabbos dinner every Friday night, and it’s not uncommon for us to go until 2 to 3:00 in the morning,” Heller said Sunday as he stood in front of the synagogue’s still-broken window, now marked off with yellow caution tape.
“My wife was sitting with our 10-month-old, maybe seven feet away. Some of my kids were even closer, playing on the floor,” he said.
Heller, his wife and six of their children were joined by several guests when the vandals struck.
No one was injured.
The Hellers live in Crown Heights, but spend the Sabbath and holidays in an apartment above the synagogue, since travel is forbidden on those days.
“I would like to say this wasn’t anti-Semitism, but I’m doubtful,” Heller said.
“We are one of four storefronts that look exactly the same, and three were lit up the same way.
“Ours happened to be the one that was hit, on a Friday night, no less.”
Police are looking for two men, who they say threw an object through the window and then fled. The object wasn’t identified
Authorities are investigating the crime as a possible bias incident.
The synagogue does not have cameras, but police are looking through footage from surveillance systems from nearby storefronts, the rabbi said.