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On the evening of July 17, a brick crashed through the kitchen window of the Tabacinic Family Chabad Jewish Center in Pensacola, Fla., landing where a visiting rabbi had been standing seconds earlier. Spray-painted in black writing on the brick were swastikas and an antisemitic slur.
Mendel Danow, the rabbi who runs the Jewish community center, was aghast. He wanted to move on from the incident as quickly as possible. But as news of the vandalism spread, shocking the Jewish community in Pensacola, Danow vowed to turn the act of hate into something more.
Danow already had plans to expand the community center by renovating a nearby building he’d purchased. Now, he had the first piece to build it.
“The brick that was thrown, which was intended to bring hate and negativity and division and so on — we will use that brick as the cornerstone,” Danow told The Washington Post.
Danow announced the idea to a packed audience at the Chabad center a few days later to applause and felt a weight lift from the room. It was the perfect way to rally a community reeling from a rattling moment of hate, he said.
“The response is going to be so much positivity that he’ll regret throwing that brick by how much good is coming out of it,” Danow said.
Pensacola police are still pursuing leads on the case, a spokesperson told The Post on Thursday.
Danow established the center in 2018 after moving to the city with his wife. They were warmly received by the Jewish community, Danow said, and slowly built up a vibrant following with the slogan “Judaism with the joy.”
“A really beautiful community has sprouted up over the years from this,” Danow said.
Two “roving rabbis” who were visiting the center from New Jersey were preparing dinner on July 17 when a loud crash of shattering glass sounded through the kitchen. The rabbis rushed outside and saw a person run behind a building and speed off in a car, Danow said. They contacted both police and Danow, who was not at the center at the time.
Danow, who grew up in Sweden, said he’d had antisemitic remarks hurled at him in the past as a child. But it was jarring to have one crash into the community he’d built in Florida. It didn’t reflect the neighborhood he’d gotten to know, he said.
“I never thought it would happen in Pensacola,” Danow said. “But I guess there are crazy people everywhere.”
Danow was determined not to let the incident cast a pall over Pensacola’s Jewish community. The Chabad center quickly announced a Friday afternoon gathering before Shabbat that week on July 21. Around 150 Jewish and non-Jewish community members came. Before Danow spoke, they lit an arrangement of candles on a table that spelled out “LIGHT.”
Then, Danow told the crowd that the center would respond to the vandalism with a message of positivity, sharing his plan for the fateful brick.
The brick, scrubbed of the swastikas, will either be placed in the structure of the new building or put on display inside, accompanied by a plaque to explain where it came from. It would stand out against the building’s white frontage, but that’s the point, Danow said.
“It’s going to have a place of honor,” Danow said. “To show that light wins over darkness.”
The center is also holding a fundraiser to enhance security and organizing its own donation drive for charities in response to the vandalism, Danow said.
Danow hopes to open the new building, which will contain a day care, kosher store, synagogue and a large catering kitchen, within six months. The center still needs to secure permits and make a final decision on where to place the fateful brick, he said. A police spokesperson told The Post that the brick is currently considered a piece of evidence but would be returned to the rabbi once the case is closed.
Wherever it lands, the brick has already transformed from a symbol of hate into a building block for Danow’s community. Danow said that several people told him that they came to the pre-Shabbat gathering with heavy hearts, until they heard about his plan.
“At the end of the event, they walked out with such a strong feeling of positivity and energized to do good,” Danow said. “It was like a total transformation.”
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Source link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/07/28/jewish-chabad-pensacola-swastika-brick/