UES Ice Menorah Smashed To Pieces In 'Malicious' Act, Rabbi Says

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — Just five days ago, members of the Chabad Israel Center gathered on the corner of East 93rd Street and Second Avenue to watch the carving and lighting of an impressive ice menorah, as firetrucks dropped parachutes filled with gelt to mark the first night of Hanukkah.

But three days later, around 10 p.m. Wednesday, Chabad Israel Rabbi Uriel Vigler returned to the same corner and found the professionally-carved, 5-foot-tall sculpture smashed into tiny pieces, with chunks of ice strewn across the sidewalk and spilling onto the street.

"At first, I assumed it must have melted," Vigler wrote on Facebook.

"When I looked more closely, however, I realized it had not melted at all," he continued. "Aside from the frigid weather we’ve had all week, which certainly would’ve kept the menorah intact, it had clearly been hacked to pieces—a deliberate and malicious act by someone who didn’t like our menorah and what it represented."

The apparent act of vandalism was the second such act targeting Chabad Israel Center in the last three months, as Upper East Site first reported.

In October, a man kicked and urinated on a sukkah — a temporary structure erected for the Jewish holiday Sukkot — that the synagogue had built hours earlier on East 92nd Street and First Avenue, according to police.

No arrests were announced in the ensuing weeks. But hours after Patch asked the NYPD on Friday whether there were any updates in that case, police announced an arrest: Marty Party, a 37-year-old FDNY employee, who has been charged with criminal mischief, according to authorities.

City payrolls identify Party as a firefighter who has worked for the department since 2014. The sukkah vandalism had been investigated as a possible hate crime, though no such charges were announced against Party.

Vigler told Patch in an email that he does not plan to report the menorah vandalism to the police.

Assembly Member Rebecca Seawright, who represents Yorkville, said that she was "sickened" by the act.

"While families gathered together and celebrated the miracles of Hanukkah, cowards gathered to perpetrate hate fueled vandalism against our community," she said in a statement. "We must condemn these actions in one unified voice and make it clear that hate has no place in New York."

In his post, Vigler said he struggled to understand what would cause someone to destroy a symbol that "represents light, purity and holiness." But he vowed that the synagogue would press on — since the start of Hanukkah, the organization has distributed latkes, doughnuts and thousands of menorahs in the neighborhood, and planned to light a candle for the holiday's fifth night at its Second Avenue headquarters on Thursday.

"The Torah teaches that it only takes a small amount of light to dispel tremendous darkness, and that is our goal," he wrote. "Spread the light, dispel the darkness."

Related coverage: Man Who Vandalized UES Sukkah Still Sought, Police Say