Chabad of the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh, led by shliach Rabbi Yisroel Altein, and the local Jewish Federation, were defaced on Monday with hateful antisemitic messages and symbols.
By Anash.org reporter
On Monday morning, residents of Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood woke up to find several Jewish buildings and homes defaced with Antisemitic graffiti, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported.
Chabad of Squirrel Hill was vandalized with red graffiti reading “Jews 4 Palestine” and an inverted red triangle, which is used to represent support for Hamas fighting. The Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh’s sign in South Oakland was marked with graffiti accusing the organization of funding genocide, and numerous yard signs with the words “We stand with Israel” were defaced.
This event comes nearly six years after the Tree of Life shooting in Squirrel Hill that claimed the lives of 11, making it the deadliest attack on Jews in U.S. history.
At a news conference, Pittsburgh police Chief Larry Scirotto shared that surveillance footage showed a black sedan near the Chabad of Squirrel Hill around 1:40 a.m. A single individual is visible in the footage, though the police are investigating the involvement of others.
Shliach Rabbi Yisroel Altein told the Post-Gazette that it is necessary to “educate the community at large of right and wrong, light and dark, evil and good then we should be able to hopefully see our city rally around positivity and goodness and light.”
Community members promptly covered the graffiti and then worked to remove it. Anash and shluchim used the opportunity to add light by inviting onlookers to put on tefillin.
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