A Hollywood synagogue was vandalized Thursday night, the second time this summer.
Los Angeles police are investigating the incidents as potential hate crimes. An LAPD spokesman said officers took a hate crime report at the scene on Friday.
Video captured by the synagogue’s security camera shows two hooded men crossing Melrose Avenue and approaching the entrance to Kahal Ahavas Yisroel on Thursday night. There, one of the men wearing a dark hoodie appears to hand his cellphone over to the other man, who is wearing a light hoodie. The man in the dark hoodie then begins to bang on the windows with his forearm before drawing an unidentifiable blunt instrument from his sleeve, and then using the object to smash the windows of the place of worship.
The man in the light sweatshirt appears to record video of the incident with a cellphone.
Doni Dror, a board member at the synagogue, spoke to KCAL News on Sunday and said the men smashed the windows but did not go inside; no property was stolen.
He said the synagogue had been vandalized just a few weeks before, and he believes the incidents are related and hate-driven.
“It’s hard for me to imagine that these two consecutive incidents, so close together with our building, it’s hard to say that it’s not,” Dror told KCAL.
An LAPD spokesman did not provide specifics about the earlier incident, nor did he shed light on the current investigation, other than to confirm a hate crime report was taken the following day.
Antisemitic hate crimes have surged since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, according to the Anti-Defamation League.
In the three months after the attack, there was a 36% increase in antisemitic incidents across the U.S., according to the ADL — an organization founded in 1913 “to stop the defamation of the Jewish people and to secure justice and fair treatment to all.” Incidents totaled 3,291 between Oct. 7 of last year and Jan. 7, 2024, the group said.
Calls and emails to the synagogue were not returned.
“We strongly condemn these apparent acts of bigotry and the vandalism of a place of worship,” said Hussam Ayloush, the executive director in Los Angeles of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. “Antisemitism or hate of any form must not be tolerated in our communities. We stand in solidarity with the Jewish community against this unacceptable act.”