In recent months, reports of violence directed against visibly Jewish people in New York City have seemingly become routine – and almost anticipated. Clearly some of our vaunted defense organizations with multi-million dollar budgets and highly paid staff ostensibly dedicated to dealing with this sort of thing are not up to the job. It is time for the establishment of a genuine, Jewish defense organization with a narrowly focused agenda driven by concern for anti-Semitism and which views the defense of Jews as a sacred mission and not as a fundraising catchphrase. A brief review of only the past few months will underscore the urgency of the need.
Last November, a Satmar chassid was reportedly attacked for no apparent reason in Williamsburg while walking home from shul with his son on a Saturday night while wearing his shtreimel.
In January earlier this year, a Lubavitcher chassid was said to have been “sucker punched” by one of a group of teenagers who were congregating on a sidewalk in Crown Heights. Interestingly, there apparently was no robbery attempt.
In May, also in Crown Heights, a man was reportedly screaming at two chassidic young girls for not getting out of his way quickly enough as he approached on a narrow sidewalk. A chassidic man tried to intervene at which point the screamer yelled at him: “You Jews, you’ve created this cult” and proceeded to spit in the intervener’s face.
Other unprovoked attacks since May included one in Crown Heights in which a woman tried to pull off her victim’s sheitel, and two assaults on chassidic men in Williamsburg, including one this past Tisha B’Av.
In June, in Borough Park, a surveillance camera recorded a man jumping out of a car’s passenger side to jump and pummel a man wearing a shtreimel and who then jumped back into the waiting car. The head of the local Borough Park Shmira Patrol told them that there were at least six other similar attacks that same night that they know of.
Just last week, a man threw a rock at Andrew Gopin, a 63-year-old Lubavitcher chassid who was exercising in Lincoln Terrace Park in Crown Heights, knocking out two front teeth. The attacker yelled anti-Jewish slurs as he also punched Gopin in the face.
Then, of course, here was the widely reported incident in the heart of Flatbush this past Saturday at 7 p.m., in which two men beat up a Jewish man apparently on the way from shul with a belt while hurling anti-Jewish slurs at him. Police at the scene said the assault was the third such attack on Jewish men in Brooklyn in less than a week.
And on Monday, a Hatzalah volunteer was attacked with a glass bottle.
Sadly, local Jews report that for every reported incident, there are several that go unreported. So the problem is even worse than the public is led to believe.
The need for a new community-based approach to all of this seems clear. To be sure, the lack of a serious, comprehensive city governmental response contributes materially to the problem. But this, too, is a function of the lack of concerted advocacy on the part of those we have heretofore entrusted the job of seeing to our security.