Thursday, May 09, 2024
Police investigate attack on Michigan synagogue members by 'Jew hater'
Police are investigating what witnesses said was an antisemitic attack against two Jewish women at a synagogue in Oak Park by a man who called himself a "Jew hater."
At about 9 a.m. last Thursday, a man driving in a Chevy SUV pulled up into a parking lot outside Congregation Beth Shalom, a Jewish congregation in Oak Park, said Oak Park Police Lt. Ryan Bolton. During the incident, he shouted at a synagogue member, calling her a "baby killer" and using an epithet, then attacked a synagogue employee with an object that hit her, Bolton said. He fled before police arrived.
Bolton said police are trying to locate the vehicle the suspect drove in, described as a 2008 to 2012 Chevy Traverse, dark in color — black, possibly blue — with a heavy dent on the front passenger door.
"It was driven by a white male with dark hair and a long beard," Bolton said.
Rabbi Robert Gamer, the religious leader of Congregation Beth Shalom, said the incident took place near the entrance of his congregation. The suspect spewed obscenities and threw an object at a person, he said.
The incident comes at a time of concern about antisemitism among many in the Jewish community. President Joe Biden delivered a speech Tuesday at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum's Annual Days of Remembrance Ceremony about the threats that Jews are currently facing. Knollwood Country Club, a predominantly Jewish country club in West Bloomfield, was vandalized in February. In April 2023, a Royal Oak synagogue, The Woodward Avenue Shul, was vandalized and in December 2022, a man drove to Temple Beth El, a Bloomfield Township synagogue, yelling antisemitic remarks at parents and children.
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