In the midst of a national and citywide spike in anti-Semitic acts, an Upper West Side church, which recently announced its status as a sanctuary for the undocumented, discovered a series of swastikas carved into its front door. The Fourth Universalist Society, a Unitarian Universalist church, learned of the vandalism on the morning of Feb. 28. “Our building engineer arrived at church and saw it carved on the front doors, facing Central Park West,” the Rev. Schuyler Vogel said. “We suspect it happened sometime that night before; our building closed at 10 p.m. — sometime between that and 9 a.m.” The church reported the damage to law enforcement that morning. While Fourth Universalist did not have a security camera, camera footage from two of the church’s neighbors was viewed but no suspect was found, Vogel said. The congregation is considering installing its own security system. Unitarian Universalism has Christian roots but evolved into a progressive institution without a specific required set of beliefs, Vogel said, explaining that atheists, agnostics, Christians, Jews and followers of other religious philosophies are members of his congregation. The vandalism, which is being investigated by New York Police Department’s Hate Crime Task Force, came in the midst of a 55 percent year-to-date increase in hate crimes from Jan. 1 to Feb. 26 compared to last year, according to the NYPD. During that same period, anti-Semitic...
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