My Chicago Synagogue Was Vandalized on Shabbat. Hours Later I Went There to Find Solace.
We first heard about the incident Shabbat morning, when a neighbor alerted us that our shul, the Chicago Loop Synagogue, had been vandalized. My family’s first reaction was not to take him seriously—“What?” That can’t be!”—but it was all too true: Shortly after midnight, a black SUV had driven up, a masked guy had gotten out, smashed one of the floor-to-ceiling windows of the synagogue’s front, and applied peel-off swastika stickers to the doors before driving off.
When we arrived for Shabbat services that day, the window was boarded up, and I couldn’t spot the swastikas anywhere, only a pile of sparkling shards on the foyer’s floor attested to the attack. Two TV vans were still parked outside, but one cameraman was packing up, and the other stood quietly in the corner, filming us walking in. I was grateful not to be approached and asked what I felt about the attack that’s being investigated as a hate crime, because I still had to figure that out. In an odd way, I was disappointed not to have seen the swastikas myself; I have seen them only on the video footage that’s now playing on local TV stations. For me, having grown up in post-war Germany, swastika stickers on my Chicago synagogue fast forwarded the past into the present. Somehow, I am blasé about it: What else is new?