Montreal police are investigating an incident at a local synagogue that B’nai Brith Canada is calling “one of the worst such incidents to take place in Canada in years.”
Torah scrolls were on the floor and other religious items stuffed in toilets at the Sepharade Kol Yehouda, a small, home-based synagogue in Côte St-Luc, an on-island Montreal suburb with a large Jewish population.
The Sepharade Kol Yehouda is a home-based synagogue. (CBC)
As well, anti-Semitic graffiti was scrawled on the walls, according to the man who was first to discover what he described as a “carnage.”
Ralph Amar, a member of the congregation, had gone to the synagogue with his son to retrieve religious items on Wednesday, the eve of the holiday of Shavuot, a celebration of the Jews receiving the Torah, especially the Ten Commandments.
Part of the scene at the Sepharade Kol Yehouda in the Montreal suburb of Côte St-Luc. (Courtesy of B’nai Brith Canada)
“Torah scrolls are considered extremely sacred in Judaism, to the extent that damaged scrolls are typically buried in a cemetery, rather than disposed of in any other manner,” B’nai Brith Canada said in a statement.
In April, B’nai Brith released its Annual Audit of Antisemitic Incidents that showed that the number of incidents increased in 2019, for the fourth year in a row, averaging over six every day.
With files from CBC News, RCI
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