Michael Chelst received a call from the building, in which his kosher restaurant Char Bar is located in downtown Washington, D.C., informing him that someone had smashed the street-facing windows.
The Metropolitan Police Department subsequently told Chelst that someone reported the vandalism, whose damage Chelst estimates to be between $8,000 and $10,000, at about 3:30 a.m. on Saturday, the restaurant owner told JNS.
“Someone else saw it around 8 or 9 in the morning, and they called again,” he said, noting that the attack occurred “sometime between 10 p.m. and 3:30 in the morning.”
“People are so stupid. What a waste of people’s time and resources,” he told JNS. “That’s what went through my head first. I look at people like that—I more have pity for them. They don’t have a life. For what?”
Four years ago, someone broke windows at the restaurant, which Chelst bought 10 years ago, during riots in Washington that coincided with rallies for the Black Lives Matter movement. No other restaurants on the street were damaged, Chelst told JNS. (An online fundraiser for Char Bar from 2020, which has been revived following the recent attack, has raised $17,587—of a goal of $72,000—from 374 people.)
“These people—probably multiple people, but it could be one person—they brought kind-of cobblestone pavers, not typical rocks which you’re going to find around anywhere near this area,” Chelst told JNS. “They were carrying it. They brought them over and they tossed them.”
“These are rocks that were not local. It was not like someone got drunk and decided that they thought it was fun to smash a window. Picked up a rock from somewhere here and just grabbed one,” he added. “This had to have been premeditated. You had to decide to bring those with the intention of doing damage.”
The vandal or vandals didn’t damage any of the other restaurants on the street, including ones adjacent to Char Bar and across the street. Chelst noted that the attack came hours before the Jewish Federations of North America’s General Assembly, and a rally on Sunday, and it came on the anniversary of Kristallnacht (the “night of broken glass”) on Nov. 9 and 10, 1938, in which hundreds of European synagogues and Jewish buildings were burned and hundreds of Jews were killed.
JNS asked if Chelst thought the vandals were aware that the attack took place on the anniversary of Kristallnacht.
“I’m not one to want to be accused of starting conspiracy theories. I don’t know if that person was educated—it certainly could have been,” he said. “It’s symbolic. Breaking glass at night as opposed to doing other things, spray painting or something. It certainly could be that.”
Chelst has been in touch with five different officers from different departments. “The police have been all over here,” he said.
JNS asked if the attack is being investigated as a hate crime.
“That’s what I hear,” Chelst said. “That’s what I’ve been told. Someone else said originally it was not reported that way. I believe, from the people I’ve spoken to, that yes.” (JNS sought comment from the Metropolitan Police Department.)
Char Bar is not only a kosher restaurant, Chelst and others told JNS, but it’s also a fixture in the Jewish community and an important venue for kosher-keeping visitors.
“This is the only sit-down, waiter restaurant that is considered kosher among all people in the area,” Chelst told JNS. “We are here to serve the Jewish population that is in D.C. on any given day. I say that because three-quarters of our clients are customers who are not from D.C.”
Some 10,000 students dine at Char Bar annually, from schools as far as São Paulo, Brazil.
“They need a place to get food, sit down to have stuff there. We’re accommodating them,” Chelst said. “Then we have maybe Ted Cruz or other politicians, and Jack Lew and different people have come in as they’re having political meetings, and ambassadors coming here.” (He referred to Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Lew, the U.S. ambassador to Israel and former U.S. treasury secretary.)
“People have conventions here and business meetings, and then in the summer, our restaurant is mostly tourists who come to D.C.,” Chelst said, noting that the restaurant remains open on Pesach to accommodate visitors.
“Our entire goal is to serve the Jewish community. It’s a passion project for me,” he said. “It is still a business, but the business part is very much secondary to our goal here, which is to represent D.C. and people to come to D.C. and say, ‘Wow. D.C. is a great place for a kosher diner.’”
Rabbi Hyim Shafner, who has led the Frum Shul Kesher Israel in Washington’s Georgetown neighborhood since 2017, has a salad named after him on the Char Bar menu. (The Shafner, for $18, consists of mixed lettuce, hearts of palm, avocado, red pepper, crispy chickpeas and tahini ranch.)
“Char Bar is the longest-standing and most permanent and well-known kosher restaurant downtown. It’s a vital service to the community, both to visitors and to all of us who live down here,” the rabbi told JNS.
“It’s just such an important place for us to have meetings and to feel like it really adds to the community,” Shafner said. “Michael, the owner, does such a great job of keeping it going almost as a community service. So it’s kind of devastating.”
“On the one hand, I thought to myself maybe it’s just some hooligans throwing rocks around. But on the other hand, it really was on Kristallnacht, which is just—it’s hard to believe that that’s coincidence and nothing else was damaged except for that,” Shafner added. “It’s part of, I think, the zeitgeist right now, in which Jews feel like it’s OK for people to target us.”
“Who would’ve imagined 20 years ago that you wouldn’t go to synagogue without security?” he said. “What does that mean in a country that’s built on religious freedom? It’s really something that I think our society needs to really wake up and think about.”
(JNS)
