A University City rabbi says a teenager on a bicycle hit him over the head and yelled a racial slur this past Saturday, steps from his synagogue.
Rabbi Yonatan Halevy, of the Shiviti Congregation, says this was the latest in a series of incidents by a group of teenagers targeting his congregation that has increasingly escalated.
“Every day they come by here, taunt us, throwing bottles at us, sitting on our roof blasting music, and then breaking a window to my van,” Halevy said. “Last but not least, what happened on Saturday.”
Halevy moved the congregation of 44 families into a 3,300 square-foot space on the southwest corner of the UC Marketplace shopping center to allow for enough social distancing to celebrate the High Holy Days amid the Coronavirus outbreak. He says the group of teenagers routinely causes a nuisance on the property, but seems to single out his congregation, formally called Kahillet Shaar HaShamayim.
On Saturday, Halevy says he was walking to synagogue with his father on Governor Drive, when one of the teens recognized them. He says the teen biked over, hit the rabbi over the head with a closed fist, called him the N-word and yelled a variation of white power before biking away.
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