A JEWISH lay-minister and magistrate is appealing today for help from the community after his synagogue was daubed with graffiti—following months of vandalism.

David Brandes arrived at Stepney’s Congregation of Jacob synagogue on Wednesday to find 3ft-high letters in red smeared on the front of the building in Commercial Road.

“I want people to engage with us,” he told the East London Advertiser. “We encourage visits from schools and other groups to visit us and look round our house of worship, so that there’s no mystique about our congregation.”

Police at Limehouse have been told and are examining CCTV footage.

A camera had only just been installed on the building after an attack earlier this year when the front-windows were smashed, which are still boarded up.

Mr Brandes, from Whitechapel, added: “This is the latest incident in a situation that’s been going on for months.”

The building—one of the East End’s oldest surviving synagogues which celebrated its centenary in 2003—had only just undergone a total refurbishment after ground movement caused cracks in its listed facia.