A Jewish student from the University of Pittsburgh was brutally attacked this weekend for simply wearing a Star of David necklace.

The attack reportedly occurred around 2 a.m. on Friday in Pittsburgh’s Oakland area, where the victim encountered about eight men who, upon noticing his necklace, verbally harassed him with antisemitic insults. At least three of them physically assaulted him, resulting in a bruised lip before a bystander intervened.

“So very disheartening to learn about,” Shawn Brokos, director of community security for the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh, tells CBS News. “The message is this just can’t continue. Our Jewish students need to feel safe walking around, whether it’s on campus or off campus.”

Chabad at Pitt Rabbi Shmuli Rothstein offered the same emotional sentiment, saying, “Seeing someone’s religion should not trigger something inside you to beat the junk out of him. That’s a hate crime, that is hate.”

“Be proud of who you are. There’s going to be haters in this world,” he added. “As long as we are strong about who we are, we can make the world a better place.”

Pittsburgh police are investigating the off-campus incident in collaboration with the FBI. All the assailants are described as being in their early 20s, with one suspect at the time of the attack wearing a white t-shirt paired with a gold chain, another a bright orange shirt, while a third was seen in a dark-colored sweatshirt.

Unfortunately, this is the second attack motivated by Jewish hatred at the University of Pittsburgh within a month after a man wearing a keffiyeh and armed with a glass bottle injured two Jewish students en route to a Shabbat dinner at the campus Hillel building. Both victims were repotedly wearing kippahs at the time of the attack.