Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Israeli Charged With Desecrating Crucifix in Ukraine

(JTA) — Police in the city of Uman in Ukraine arrested an Israeli man they suspect of defacing a large crucifix as payback for the desecration of a synagogue last month.

The suspect, Netanel Shimon, is said to have dismantled on Dec. 31 the Jesus icon from a crucifix that locals in 2013 set up near the bank of a lake where many Jews go to perform tashlikh – a ritual associated with Rosh Hashanah, the holiday when thousands of Jews descend on Uman, the newspaper Gazeta reported Tuesday.

Security footage showed four males wearing traditional haredi garb trying unsuccessfully to bring down the entire crucifix. They leave and another man, wearing a mask, is seen tearing the icon from the cross.

Shimon, who is in his 20s, has denied any wrongdoing and complained in letters published by the news website Behadrei Haredim that authorities are denying him access to legal representation and medicines for his diabetes.

Uman is a major pilgrimage site for followers of Rabbi Nachman, an 18th century luminary, whose gravesite is the focal point of an annual Rosh Hashanah celebration. Some 25,000 Jews arrive there on that holiday annually.

The same cross was defaced with graffiti in 2013.

In recent years, Uman has seen several far-right rallies against the presence of Jews there. Street brawls between visitors and locals are not uncommon.

Last month, a synagogue in Uman was sprayed with red paint and desecrated with a pig’s head with a swastika carved into its forehead.

The synagogue is part of the Ohel complex, built near the gravesite of Rabbi Nachman.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

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.