{"id":1117,"date":"2021-06-10T15:21:20","date_gmt":"2021-06-10T18:21:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/berdichev.org\/wordpress\/?p=1117"},"modified":"2021-06-10T15:22:57","modified_gmt":"2021-06-10T18:22:57","slug":"vandalism-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/berdichev.org\/index.php\/2021\/06\/10\/vandalism-2\/","title":{"rendered":"VANDALISM-2"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Alleged Vandal of Chasidic Master’s Tomb Arrested in Ukraine

Last week, vandals scrawled swastikas on Jewish graves in Berdichev, Ukraine. They targeted the tomb of Rabbi Levi Yitzchak, an 18th-century Chasidic master.
By Tamar Runyan<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/td><\/tr>
Last week, vandals scrawled swastikas on Jewish graves in Berdichev, Ukraine. They targeted the tomb of Rabbi Levi Yitzchak, an 18th-century Chasidic master.<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Mar 11, 2008
Police in Berdichev, Ukraine, arrested the leader of a new anti-Semitic group responsible for vandalizing the tomb of 18th-century Chasidic master, according to Rabbi Moshe Thaler, a Chabad-Lubavitch emissary there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thaler discovered the damage to the building March 2. He found windows smashed and part of a wall missing. The structure houses the grave of Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berdichev, one of the students of the Baal Shem Tov’s successor, the Maggid of Mezrich. He was a contemporary of the first Chabad Rebbe, Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Thaler returned the following day, the wall had been broken down completely and someone had scratched a swastika into the building’s door. Police, along with Mayor Vasily Konstantinovich, visited the site March 4 and opened an investigation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But again on Wednesday, Thaler, who directs the city’s Jewish community with wife Chana Thaler, discovered that vandals had returned to the cemetery, spray-painting neo-Nazi grafitti and swastikas on the tomb, other graves and a Holocaust memorial at the cemetery’s entrance. They apparently also broke the remaining windows of the Chasidic sage’s tomb.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Thaler, police made the arrest that night, catching the 21-year-old leader of the vandals returning to the scene of the crimes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For his part, Thaler called for a group of teenagers who follow the leader to fix the damage and ask for forgiveness “from the Jewish nation, from all the citizens of Berdichev.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“This was only the beginning of the group,” said the rabbi. “They had many plans to do more damage.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also last week, vandals struck the southern Poland tomb of another of the Maggid of Mezritch’s students, Rabbi Elimelech of Lishensk. They covered the grave with swastikas, anti-Semitic slogans and a Star of David in a noose. And in Tomsk, Russia, youths threw stones at the windows of the Siberian city’s synagogue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Police are still investigating both incidents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We remain hopeful,” said Chabad-Lubavitch Rabbi Levi Kamenitzky, chief rabbi of Tomsk, “that they will do their best to find out whoever is responsible for such a cowardly act.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alleged Vandal of Chasidic Master’s Tomb Arrested in Ukraine Last week, vandals scrawled swastikas on Jewish graves in Berdichev, Ukraine. They targeted the tomb of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/berdichev.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1117"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/berdichev.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/berdichev.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/berdichev.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/berdichev.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1117"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/berdichev.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1117\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1120,"href":"http:\/\/berdichev.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1117\/revisions\/1120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/berdichev.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/berdichev.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/berdichev.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}