Chanukah is the Jewish festival of lights, jelly donuts…and apparently anti-Semitic incidents.
Such as this:
Dozens of people led by an Orthodox priest smashed a menorah in Moldova’s capital, using hammers and iron bars to remove the candelabra during Hanukkah, officials said.
The 1.5 meter(5-foot)-tall ceremonial candelabrum was retrieved, reinstalled and is now under police guard.
Police said they were investigating but there was no official reaction from Moldova’s Orthodox Church, which is part of the Russian Orthodox Church and counts 70 percent of Moldovans as members.
The national government said in a statement that “hatred, intolerance and xenophobia” are unacceptable.
And this:
Three masked men carrying Nazi flags tried to disrupt a Hanukkah ceremony in Connecticut, but families at the event didn’t let the protesters dampen their holiday spirit, WSFB-TV reported.
Fairfield First Selectman Kenneth Flatto said he and others at Sunday’s event at the Sherman Green gazebo ignored the men while lighting a menorah on the third night of Hanukkah.
“Out of the blue, these three men came about 20 yards away with masks and they unfurled these hateful signs and started screaming,” Flatto said.
Flatto said he called police and the men fled when officers arrived. Police followed the car, but it was unclear whether they caught the men.
Rabbi Shlame Landa organized the ceremony for Chabad of Fairfield. He said those attending the Hanukkah celebration battled darkness by not backing down from spreading goodness and light during the festival of lights.
And this:
A Muslim man attacked a Chabad rabbi Saturday night as he was conducting the annual ceremony to light the public Chanukah menorah in Stefenfaltz Square in the city of Vienna, Austria.
The attacker hurled himself at Rabbi Dov Gruzman, principal of the city’s Jewish school run by the Chabad-Lubavitch Chassidic movement, and began punching him, a local resident told Arutz Sheva.
As the rabbi tried to hold off his attacker, the Muslim suddenly bit his victim, severing part of his finger in the process. The Muslim was caught and arrested by police, and was held for questioning. The rabbi was evacuated to the hospital where doctors rushed to reattach his finger.
Gruzman told Arutz Sheva that the Muslim had raced towards the entrance at the beginning of the ceremony and began to curse the Jews who were there and the Jewish people in general. “I tried to hold him off, to keep him away from the entrance and he bit me really hard, and that’s how he injured me,” he said.
The event itself did not discourage Rabbi Gruzman, and in fact strengthened his resolve. “We are glad that such an event occurred,” he said. “Today, because of what happened, we are planning [a much larger event]. We increased the number of sufganiot [Chanukah jelly doughnuts] from 50 to 700 – and this is our answer to the attack and to anti-Semitism.”
However, the rabbi himself will be unable to participate in Sunday evening’s ceremony due to the fact that he is still hospitalized, and being monitored for infection from the bite. Nevertheless, he emphasized, through the Chanukah lighting ceremony he sends his blessing to every Jew around the world.
On the plus side, we’ve been around for thousands of years and faced way more formidable haters than these jokers, who are also going to be relegated to the dustbin of history.
