Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Bat-Wielding Attacker Smashes Glass Doors of Florida Synagogue

A shirtless man using a baseball bat smashed the glass front doors of a South Florida synagogue.

A surveillance video showed the man vandalizing Temple Beth Torah in Wellington. He also smashed a church, as well as 17 parked cars, according to reports. The attack occurred in the wee hours of Sunday.

“That’s always a concern in the Jewish community when something like this happens is are you being targeted because of you being Jewish? I don’t know if that’s the case in this situation,” Rabbi Andrew Rosenkranz told WPBF-TV. He said investigators believe the choice of a synagogue was random.

“I hope that whoever did this gets apprehended, I hope that he or they get the help that they need, and I hope that it seeps in that they understand how much they hurt people when they did something like this,” the rabbi said.

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.