As a rabbi prepared to light a menorah on the front lawn of a Chabad house near the University of Kentucky’s campus on Saturday night, a black SUV screeched outside. The driver shouted anti-Semitic slurs, police told the Lexington Herald-Leader. Then, when a community member stepped in to intervene, the driver grabbed his arm and sped away, dragging him for a block and then running over his leg, Chabad of the Bluegrass said on Facebook. As bystanders rushed to help him, though, the injured man insisted the ceremony continue before getting medical attention, the Chabad’s rabbi said. “He said, ‘First, let’s light the menorah,’” Rabbi Shlomo Litvin told WKYT. “I’m not going to allow that to stop us from celebrating our faith and spreading the light.” The incident has sparked a police investigation and widespread condemnation from Kentucky political leaders, who described it as an assault on the Jewish faith.
“The anti-Semitic attack reported Saturday night outside of the Jewish Student Center is an outrage. This hate has absolutely no place in the commonwealth,” Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) said on Twitter. “That this attack occurred on the third night of Hanukkah, during menorah-lighting celebrations, makes it all the more hateful, hurtful and cowardly.” Anti-Semitic attacks have been on the rise in the U.S. in recent years, with the Anti-Defamation League charting a 12 percent jump in its most recent national audit in 2019. Jewish centers on college campuses have particularly been targeted this year, with an arsonist burning down a Chabad house at the University of Delaware in August and neo-Nazi fliers plastered on a Chabad sign at the University of Central Florida in October.
via washington post: Driver shouted anti-Semitic slurs, ran over a man at menorah lighting, authorities say: ‘Hateful, hurtful and cowardly’