Vandals smash Brooklyn synagogue front window

Bushwick rabbi flags down police car after attack, which took place as family was sitting at Shabbat table

NEW YORK — Vandals shattered a large plate glass window of a Chabad synagogue in Brooklyn on Friday as a rabbi and his family sat at their Shabbat table, a New York news report said.

NBC New York said the family saw two people walking away from the front of the building right after the window was smashed.

Rabbi Menachem Heller, his wife, and nine children were in the Chabad of Bushwick house when the attack took place. The family stays at the building over the Jewish Sabbath.

Heller then crossed the street and because of Shabbat, asked others to call 911. He eventually flagged down a police car, the report said.

Heller complained in a Facebook post of a rise in frequency of hate crime and attacks against Jews in New York and called for the public to take a stand against it.

“We acknowledge the disturbing and increasingly frequent incidents of hate and prejudice in our New York community and its destructive and divisive effects, especially on young people. We encourage each other and the public to stand up against it, whenever it occurs, whatever form it takes, and towards whomever it is directed. An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us,” Heller wrote.

Police investigated 42 hate crimes through February 4, compared with 19 at the same date last year. Most of those were anti-Semitic hate crimes, according to NBC NY.