Back on the 6th to the 7th December of this year (2025) according to Ellin Bessner writing for ‘The Canadian Jewish News’ there have been a spate of mezuzah thefts – a mezuzah is a tiny parchment scroll with verses from the Written Torah on it and usually rolled up in a small container (often plastic or metal) that is then affixed to the front door post and meant to grant divine protection the household – in a Toronto apartment block called ‘West Don Apartments’ that provides subsidized living for the elderly paid for of course by the city of Toronto and apparently the building is almost entirely inhabited by jews.
She writes how:
‘“I brought you a gift: a new mezuzah, so you’ll be protected,” Rabbi Shmuel Neft explained to a visibly grateful Toronto senior, Miguel Camacho. Rabbi Neft then guided the elderly resident through the sacred ritual of affixing a replacement mezuzah onto his 10th floor apartment door.
Camacho is one of the estimated dozens of victims of what Toronto police consider a hate-motivated theft. It happened over the weekend of Dec. 6-7 in the West Don Apartments, a city-owned subsidized seniors complex run by Toronto Seniors Housing Corporation at Bathurst Street and Steeles Avenue.
Residents woke up Sunday morning and discovered their mezuzahs were missing. In a news release Dec. 8, Toronto police said they counted 20 stolen mezuzahs. But rabbis who work in the 389-unit, 14-storey building tell The CJN they believe the real total was much higher.
The building at 6250 Bathurst St. is located in the heart of a heavily Jewish neighbourhood in North York, home to many Russian-speaking seniors. While the percentage of Jewish tenants in the building has shrunk in recent years, many apartments still bear the distinct outlines of where the former tenant’s mezuzahs used to be. That is why it may be difficult to get an accurate count of how many were stolen.
By mid-morning Monday, volunteers from the Jewish Russian Community Centre had collected 175 fresh mezuzahs, and arrived at the building ready to replace the missing artifacts.
Although police had already canvassed the building on Sunday, the volunteers knocked on every door and offered mezuzahs to any of the residents who were at home, whether they were among the victims or not.
“Our hope is that by the end of today, there are more mezuzahs up in the building than there were before this incident started,” said Rabbi Mendel Zaltzman, the CEO of the JRCC organization who oversaw the distribution and installation operation.
Residents also received purple cardboard gift boxes, containing Hanukkah candles, a dreidel, lighting instructions and chocolate coins.
The disturbing vandalism incident came just a week before Hanukkah, which starts on Dec. 14. But aside from the mezuzahs, it appears nothing else Jewish was stolen. A blue-and-white Hanukkah wall decoration with a Star of David on it and the message “Season of Miracles” in the lobby beside the building’s Christmas tree, was not disturbed.
According to Rabbi Yirmi Cohen, who has ministered to the Jewish residents in the building for decades, there are security cameras installed in the lobby, but none on the floors where the residents live.
When news of the vandalism broke on Sunday, Rabbi Cohen was shocked because he and his father, Rabbi Chai Cohen, led Shabbat services there just the day before, and had checked the mezuzahs on congregants’ doors.
The incident has impacted Rabbi Cohen personally. He remembers installing many of these mezuzahs, especially during the COVID pandemic.
“You know, most of them, almost all of them, have been glued by my father and I,” Rabbi Cohen said, during an interview in the building’s community room early Monday morning.
“You can see from the pictures, you know, how some of them are pretty fresh, being taken down in a very, very horrible way.”
The thefts weren’t confined to one area but rather hit apartments on every single floor, Rabbi Cohen said.
He had originally hoped that whoever did this might have simply disposed of the Jewish religious items into the building’s industrial garbage bins, but so far, they have not been located.
He points out that the seniors who live in the subsidized building are vulnerable, and some also have the extra trauma of being Holocaust survivors from Russia.
“Some of them, as you can appreciate, are in their late 80s. Some of them left Soviet Russia and have memories of antisemitism and the hate that they had to go through,” he said. “So this is a bit of a deja vu and extremely concerning.”’ (1)
It was subsequently revealed that the true number of stolen mezuzahs was indeed much higher at around 60 or so. (2)
Predictably of course jews are already shrieking about this being an alleged ‘anti-Semitic hate crime’ and how they feel ‘intimidated in their homes’ with the myth of ‘Soviet anti-Semitism’ and ‘persecution’ being brought up as a bogeyman to terrify the senile and demented jews of West Don Apartments.
The truth I think is far, far more simple in that we already know that the jews – and Toronto police – have no idea who ripped these mezuzahs off the door posts in the apartment block and due to a lack of security cameras: they are almost certainly are never going to.
That truth is that jews have failed to consider two possibilities: firstly a random person – with mental health, drug and/or alcohol problems who may or not be homeless – having wandered into the complex and decided to go around ripping off the only thing he could find that might be valuable and that he/she could sell for some quick cash: the mezuzahs (remember there is no 24/7 concierge and few security cameras).
The second – and by far the more likely – is the population they are dealing with: seniors.
What do I mean by that?
Well seniors to be frank often go a bit doolally in their dotage especially if they have something like early onset dementia – the author remembers his great-grandmother wandering around with multiple hats on and his grandmother compulsively stealing sugar bowls and metal cutlery from supermarket cafes – so I can easily imagine a somewhat demented elderly jew wandering around West Don Apartments stealing mezuzahs and then collecting them in a drawer in their house for no particular reason other than that they are old and going senile.
The first possibility is plausible but not likely in my estimation as they would have been picked out on the initial viewing of the limited security camera footage, but the second possibility is to my mind what very likely happened and that ‘the evil anti-Semite’ that is allegedly roaming the corridors of the West Don Apartments in Toronto is just an elderly jew who has become a kleptomaniac due to their brain softening with age.
It is that simple and there is no ‘anti-Semitism’ here whatsoever!
References
(1) https://thecjn.ca/news/jewish-community-replaces-stolen-mezuzahs-at-a-toronto-seniors-complex-while-police-investigate-suspected-hate-motivated-crime/
(2) https://thecjn.ca/news/police-confirm-even-more-mezuzahs-were-stolen-from-toronto-seniors-complex-leaders-think-the-numbers-even-higher/
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