LEXINGTON, Ky. (WKYT) – A scorn wrongdoing is the thing that Chabad of the Bluegrass Rabbi Shlomo Litvin calls the defacement he found at the Jewish Student Center on UK’s grounds.
“This is coming after a flood of hostile to Semitic assaults on college grounds all over the nation,” Rabbi Litvin said.
The University of Delaware Chabad house was caught fire, against Semitic handouts were left at a Chabad place in Florida, and now there was defacement at the Chabad at UK Jewish Student Center.
“Sunday evening we had some development outside the Jewish Student Center, so I came outside to direct,” Rabbi Litvin said. “I saw that our sign had been beaten in and that the menorah’s base had been meddled with also.”
Rabbi Litvin had the menorah fixed rapidly and is intending to have the $600 sign supplanted. It’s moderately minor property harm contrasted with the effect it has on the understudies who think of it as an asylum.
“That sign has taken on an unfathomable importance,” Rabbi Litvin said. “The menorah close to it, the first indication of strict opportunity, a definitive American articulation that I reserve the option to my convictions, which is the thing that the menorah speaks to, to see those things assaulted is incredibly agonizing for huge numbers of our understudies.”
Rabbi Litvin said this is the fourth time in five years they’ve needed to supplant a vandalized sign yet each time their response is to go to their confidence.
“The goal of these activities, all the ones against us and the ones the nation over is to plant dread and disunity and doubt,” Rabbi Litvin said. “The truth of the matter is the point at which we don’t let it do that when we react rather with light and with happiness and with confidence then that is a definitive reaction to that derisive activity.”
Rabbi Litvin said they are exploring surveillance camera film and working with Lexington Police to consider the suspect or suspects responsible.
