A menorah outside the Chabad house at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign was vandalized for the third time in 10 months.
A surveillance video released by the University of Illinois Police Department shows the vandalism took place early Sunday morning outside the Chabad Center for Jewish Life, the Daily Illini student newspaper reported.
The video showed a man and a woman breaking an arm off the 9-foot menorah. The woman has been arrested, according to a Facebook post Monday night by Illini Chabad director Rabbi Dovid Tiechtel.
“Thank you all for the tremendous outpouring of love and concern. It’s heartwarming to see the strength of our entire community,” Tiechtel wrote in the post. “We must not allow these things to happen on campus or anywhere. No matter in what state of mind you are, your actions count and matter.”
An image from security-camera footage released by the University of Illinois police, showing a man knocking over the campus menorah, August 21, 2015. (screen capture: YouTube)
The menorah was repaired and rededicated in December following the previous two incidents of vandalism.
Get The Times of Israel's Daily Editionby email and never miss our top stories
In August, a 20-year-old resident of Champaign, Illinois, where the university is located, was arrested for snapping the menorah off at its base. Max Kristy was not a student at the university and told the local newspaper, the News-Gazette, that he was drunk at the time of the incident and planned to take the menorah as a gift to a Jewish friend. He was not charged with a hate crime.
The menorah was similarly vandalized in April.
Advertisement
Help us report truthfully on social media
As a multimedia journalist, my job is to take the quality, fact-based journalism produced by The Times of Israel newsroom and make it accessible across every platform — from Instagram posts to podcasts to short-form videos.
This is how many, especially young people, consume news these days. But misinformation is rampant on social media. Our team at ToI produces accurate, responsible short-form reporting on Israel and the Jewish world.
If you believe in the importance of factual social media journalism, please consider joining our reader support group, The Times of Israel Community. Your financial support is essential to sustain responsible multimedia reporting.
We’re really pleased that you’ve read X Times of Israel articles in the past month.
That’s why we started the Times of Israel - to provide discerning readers like you with must-read coverage of Israel and the Jewish world.
So now we have a request. Unlike other news outlets, we haven’t put up a paywall. But as the journalism we do is costly, we invite readers for whom The Times of Israel has become important to help support our work by joining The Times of Israel Community.
For as little as $6 a month you can help support our quality journalism while enjoying The Times of Israel AD-FREE, as well as accessing exclusive content available only to Times of Israel Community members.
Thank you, David Horovitz, Founding Editor of The Times of Israel
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on Google
