Outrage

From the movie The Blues Brothers:

Elwood: Illinois Nazis.
Jake: I hate Illinois Nazis.

I found out last night that a synagogue in my neighborhood had been vandalized early on Monday. Swastikas and other anti-Semitic graffiti were spray-painted all over the outside of the building. This happened a mere three blocks from where I live.

Here are a couple paragraphs from the Chicago Tribune's account, in Tuesday's paper:

[T]he rabbi's son came to the temple ... Monday morning [and] found swastikas and several anti-Semitic writings -- among them "Mein Kampf," "Kill the Jews" and "White Power" -- spray-painted on the outside windows.

"Frankly, I was shocked," [Rabbi] Lefkowitz said, "because this is a blight on the neighborhood of Uptown. Everyone has been working together in this neighborhood. This is a bizarre situation."

Martin Luther King Jr., reflecting on the time he spent living in Chicago, once said of the experience, "I have never in my life seen such hate." I'd like to think that my neighborhood is an exception -- a place where people of diverse backgrounds live together in relative harmony, even in a city that remains one of the most racially and ethnically segregated in the country.

The synagogue is a block north of an enclave of Vietnamese restaurants and shops. There is enough of a Mexican population to support tacquerias a few blocks away on Broadway. A half mile to the west, in Andersonville, we have the Middle Eastern Bakery and Wikstrom's Swedish Delicatessen. But amid this diversity, we are sent a message: the Jews are not welcome.

I would like to respond to that message. To the vandals: So long as you cannot live in peace with my neighbors, you are not welcome.