Montreal police are investigating after someone apparently broke into the Chabad centre in N.D.G. on Friday morning and tore a handmade donation box off a wall.
Two weeks ago, a similar break-in happened at the Chabad centre in Cote St. Luc, and the assistant rabbi at the N.D.G. centre, Josh Berkowicz, says the incident at his place early Friday morning was the latest in a string of robberies targeting Jewish religious institutions.
"There has been a string of very similar kind of thefts and break-ins in various synagogues for the past week," said Berkowicz.
Berkowicz says at first, the robber tried to enter the building, gave up, and then came back. "After half an hour he succeeded in entering the building. They were here for five minutes and then they left."
He suggests the robber went straight for what they were after — the collection box — since nothing else in the building was touched. He believes there could have been anywhere from $500 to $1,000 in that box.
Back in December, the menorah outside the building was vandalized, and there were other breakins in the past — prompting officials at the Chabad to launch a crowdfunding campaign to purchase new security cameras.
Those cameras managed to catch an image of the robbers in action, which they turned over to police.