A menorah stolen from Chabad of Nashoba Valley early Tuesday morning has sparked fears of anti-Semitism.
At 3:30 a.m. Tuesday, Rabbi Zalman Gurkow left his Tadmuck Road home, which also serves as a meeting place for Chabad of Nashoba Valley, to attend a family Hanukkah celebration in New York. He noticed that the 4-foot-tall, gold-painted, electric menorah on the front lawn had been stolen sometime during the night.
Gurkow said he has never experienced an act like this in Westford.
“Nothing similar to this. Nothing close to this. That is why there is this degree of surprise and shock. Though at this time we don’t know if this was a deliberate act of anti-Semitism, but all of the coincidences point to that,” Gurkow said.
Last Saturday morning, Gurkow discovered that the menorah had been knocked down, but assumed that it was an accident.
“I thought that it could have been anything,” he said. Gurkow said he thought the wind or an animal had knocked down the menorah.
However, coupled with the latest incident, he said this act was probably deliberate as well.
“The two incidents seem too coincidental to be independent of each other,” Gurkow said.
On Sunday, about 50 members of the Jewish community assembled on the Town Common with State Sen. Steven Panagiotakos and State Rep. Geoff Hall for the annual ceremonial lighting of the kerosene lanterns atop an 8-foot-tall wooden menorah.
“But this year’s holiday spirit has now been dampened by the apparent theft of the Chabad House’s outdoor menorah,” states a press release from Chabad of Nashoba Valley.
“Whether it was vandalism, whatever the act was, someone stole a menorah during Hanukkah and someone should give it back,” Andrew Tarsy, regional director of the Anti-Defamation League of New England, said Wednesday.
“It’s upsetting and hurtful. It is a small community in Westford and people want to celebrate their holiday and they need their menorah back to do it,” he said.
“It’s a violation of something important. Your neighbors should care and feel sorry that your tradition was violated, just as we would sorry for anyone else in their religious holiday if this happened to them,” Tarsy said.
“It’s not about this menorah’s monetary value, but rather its symbolic message,” said Gurkow.
“The menorah commemorates a miraculous victory against religious oppression by the Greek Empire in 165 BCE. It represents the core American value of religious freedom and the illumination that dispels the gloom and darkness in our personal lives, and in society as a whole. The deliberate extinguishing and removal of these lights is a blatant offense – not only against myself and my family – but one that affects every member of our community,” Gurkow said.
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