A sukkah in the heart of downtown Chicago was found vandalized on the first day of the Sukkot festival.
The sukkah, built by the Chabad Center for Jewish Life, was found Tuesday to have been vandalized during the Sukkot holiday, with spray-painted graffiti on the outside of the temporary structure.
"It's a very happy holiday,” Rabbi Meir Chai Benhiyoun told Fox32 Chicago. “My community has seen this, and they're riled up to celebrate even more," "I could cry because I was a counselor and rabbi for so many years. I feel bad for the people who did this. I don't know why they did it. Maybe they were just wasting time. But this is the middle of the city, the heart of downtown.”
For the past 34 years, the local Chabad center has built a sukkah in Chicago’s Daley Plaza every year, and this is the first time a sukkah there has been targeted by vandals.
Following the incident, the Center for Jewish Life has placed signs on the structure, noting that the sukkah is for the Sukkot holiday.
The motivation behind the vandalism remains unclear, but Rabbi Benhiyoun urged local Jews celebrating the Sukkot festival to be on alert in case the incident was intended as an anti-Semitic act.