Florida Chabad Vandalized after Expansion Plan Announcement

The Chabad Jewish Center in Boca Raton, Fla., was vandalized a day after an article in a local newspaper announced the center’s expansion plans.

A cement marker with a sign indicating the rabbi’s parking space was torn from its place and thrown through a glass door of the Jewish center sometime Monday night, the Sun-Sentinel reported.

Boca Raton police are investigating the incident, which was discovered Tuesday morning, as an act of vandalism and not a hate crime even though surrounding buildings were not subject to such vandalism, however, according to the local CBS affiliate.

“To come to a synagogue and find it having been vandalized, and littered with shattered glass, broken concrete and debris, sends painful shudders down the spine of any Jew,” Chabad Rabbi Ruvi New told the Sun Sentinel. “One can only speculate who the perpetrators were and what their motives may have been.”