Brooklyn, NY - 75 Feet of Fence Around Bensonhurst Synagogue Stolen

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Brooklyn, NY - A Bensonhurst synagogue that was simply trying to make its facility more accessible to the handicapped was the victim of an unholy theft when someone made off with the centers $15,000 exterior fence.

Recent renovations at the Jewish Community Center of Bensonhurst, which is on 23rd Avenue at 63rd Street, required the shul to temporarily remove part of its carbon steel enclosure. The synagogue piled up the 75 feet of fence and chained it to its building all the while expecting to reinstall the fence as soon as construction was complete.

But that was perhaps not in Gods plan.

We just came back one morning and the fence was missing, said synagogue board member Leon Kryzhanovsky. They even took the chain! Its shocking how far people will go.

The theft came as a big blow to the house of worship, which had been building a handicapped-accessible ramp to meet city codes. Now work is stalled with no end in sight as the Center sits shiva for its lost railing.

Even though police remain stumped as to who took the fencing, members of the Center have a pretty good idea why their fence was taken.

[Metals] cost a lot of money with todays economy. Somebody probably took this thinking, What a deal! Kryzhanovsky said.

The Daily News also reported this week that the temptation to steal and sell scrap metal whose prices have surged recently proved too much for more than 50 Department of Sanitation workers, who were caught allegedly selling metal items that people had set out on the curb for recycling.

Synagogue secretary Harry Rinkel is convinced that the Centers fence was just as lucrative. He remembered a group of contractors who came to do work a few weeks ago and spotted the fencing lying on the ground.

They asked if they could have it, and we vehemently said, No! Rinkel said. Now Im not saying they did it, but it was clearly an attractive piece of metal.