Broad City star Ilana Glazer was forced to cancel a political event last night at a Brooklyn synagogue after a criminal wrote “Kill all Jews” inside the building.
The New York Police Department is already investigating the anti-Semitic messages that were found on the stairwell of Union Temple in Prospect Heights on Thursday night, according to the New York Post.
At about 8:30, Glazer came out of the venue to tell the crowds that the 8 p.m. event, in which she was scheduled to interview journalist Amy Goodman and New York state Senate candidates Andrew Gounardes and Jim Gaughran, was canceled because of the graffiti.
“She didn’t feel comfortable ushering 200 people into the enclosed space; potential sitting ducks,” an attendee named Kathryn Gonzalez posted on Facebook.
A custodian told The Post that hateful slurs were found on the second and fifth floor and that the anti-Semitic vandal had scrawled “Kill all Jews” on a door.
“There was a lot of anxiety,” Gonzalez told The Post. “Especially given last weekend’s events and the upcoming election, the tension and fear feels heightened.”
Glazer, who is known for her comedy, was helping politicians be more accessible to citizens, but those plans were foiled all because some bigot wanted to intimidate innocent people in their place of worship.
I certainly don’t blame Glazer for cancelling the political event. In fact, that arguably the best course of action right now, with political divisions descending into violence from the right and anti-Semitic attacks on the rise. The most recent such attack, of course, involved an extremist Christian killing 11 people and injuring several others at a synagogue in Pittsburgh last week.
Since that tragic event, separate vandals have drawn a Nazi symbol on a New York City brownstone and “F*ck Jews” on a California synagogue.
It’s not a safe time to be Jewish, and that can be at least partly traced back to Donald Trump and his pattern of siding with — and empowering — white supremacists who once lived in the shadows. They feel emboldened. The fact that Trump’s denunciations of extremists in his base are tepid at best only makes things worse.
