Rabbi Yudi Steiner, director of the Rohr Chabad Center at GW, said “what I’m hoping to do today is lead by example and model how I think the Jewish response, from Jewish students especially, should be, and that is what we will talk about the rally.”

BY FAYGIE HOLT

(November 1, 2021 / JNS) Chabad at George Washington University will join with members of the Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity and others on Monday at 5 p.m. for a “Torah procession and solidarity rally” after the fraternity house was vandalized and a paper replica of a Torah was destroyed in an incident students are calling a “blatant act of anti-Semitism.”

The vandalism occurred on Saturday night at the on-campus housing for the Tau Kappa Epsilon, a fraternity with a number of Jewish students as members.

“This weekend the on-campus house of the Alpha-Pi Chapter of Tau Kappa Epsilon was broken into, vandalized and Jewish texts were desecrated,” posted the fraternity. “Our entire chapter is outraged and saddened by this blatant act of anti-Semitism and violence against our brothers. We are cooperating with university officials and the ADL.”

According to a report in the school newspaper, “the Torah scroll was one of several religious texts that belongs to the chapter, which usually uses them to swear in new members of the fraternity.” It went on to say that other religious texts were left undisturbed, though a bible was moved from one place to another.