STABBING RAMPAGE IS LATEST IN WEEK OF ANTI-SEMITIC INCIDENTS

Since Dec. 10, ADL reports 16 cases just in N.Y., N.J. area

NEW YORK

When a suspect walked into the home of a rabbi celebrating Hanukkah and stabbed five celebrants it was the latest in a week of anti-semitic attacks in the nation’s most demographically diverse area — and an incident that reverberated across the country.

“Again, here we are: mourning another act of senseless anti-semitic violence committed against our community and praying for those who were the victims of this hate,” Anti-defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement Sunday following the attack a day earlier in Monsey, N.Y.

“This is at least the 10th anti-semitic incident to hit the New York/new Jersey area in just the last week. When will enough be enough? These heinous attacks make something abundantly clear: The Jewish community needs greater protection,” Greenblatt said.

Since the Dec. 10 massacre at a kosher grocery store in New Jersey there have been 19 anti-semitic incidents in the U.S., including 16 in New York and New Jersey, according to the ADL’S Tracker of Anti-semitic Incidents. The tracker is a compilation of cases of antijewish vandalism, harassment and assault reported to or detected by the group.

Most concerning: Ten of those incidents have occurred in New York since Dec. 23 and involved assaults or threatened violence. The ADL defines assaults as incidents where people’s bodies are targeted with violence accompanied by evidence of anti-semitic animus or in a manner that attacks Jews for their religious affiliation.

To put the week-long toll in context, the New York Police Department recorded 19 hate-crime felony assault complaints in the first three quarters of 2019.

The surge of high-profile attacks on the Jewish community, including shooting rampages at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in October 2018, and at Chabad of Poway in April, have caused consternation around the country.

Anti-semitic attacks are on the rise across the U.S., leaving Jews and their communities feeling frightened and unsafe. In New York City, anti-semitic crimes have jumped 21 percent in the past year. According to the ADL, there were 1,879 incidents of anti-semitism in the United States in 2018, including more than 1,000 instances of harassment. The 2019 figures are expected to meet or exceed that number.

The Congressional Caucus on Black-jewish Relations condemned the Monsey attack “in the strongest possible terms” and said the surge in anti-semitic attacks is a “disturbing trend both here in the United States and abroad.” The National Action Network founded by Rev. Al Sharpton is planning a news conference today with black religious and civil rights leaders and Jewish allies to denounce anti-semitism.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center issued a statement urging President Donald Trump to instruct the FBI to create a special task force to address the violence. Concern over the attacks prompted Gov. Andrew Cuomo to direct the New York State Police to patrol Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods across the state.

Still, noted Mark S. Bloom, rabbi at Temple Beth Abraham in Oakland: “You can’t up security every time an incident happens because they happen so often.”

Senior Rabbi Marcia Zimmerman of Temple Israel in Minneapolis, Minnesota’s largest Jewish congregation, said Hanukkah is about Jews fighting for their faith and perhaps the antidote is to “make sure we all have an understanding of each other.”

Evan R. Bernstein, the regional director of the Antidefamation League of New York and New Jersey, said while there are no studies to explain why the incidents are occurring, he believes part of the issue is changing neighborhood demographics and stereotypes about Jews. He said there is a lack of understanding of who the Hasidic groups are as they expand in communities in the region.

The reform and conservative Jews of past decades seemed more socially integrated into the neighborhoods while the more Orthodox

groups are more insular, he said.

“It’s not because they don’t like anybody. They function different,” Bernstein said. “They just want to practice their religion in American society but they aren’t as overtly social as other Jewish groups were. That’s not a reason for a group to be marginalized, assaulted or attacked on social media. They have every reason to practice their religion the way they want to practice. They shouldn’t have to change.”

The ADL is working on several initiatives to change the perceptions and misconceptions. One is its “No Place for Hate” anti-bias, anti-bullying initiative, which works in schools. Another includes working with juvenile offenders who are involved in some of the incidents to understand what they did and why.

The Washington Post contributed to this report.