Published: 14 November 2019
Last updated: 4 March 2024
You may have heard of these attacks by now: largely focused on our Orthodox population, and especially Chasidic Jews, they have become something of an epidemic. And sadly, relative to the more extreme attacks in America, this epidemic is under-reported.
This despite the fact that some attacks have been horrifyingly violent, such as an elderly Jewish man who was struck with a paving stone in a park, someone throwing rocks at a Jewish man while he was in his truck, and another Jewish man struck by belt outside of his synagogue.
And by the way, all three of those attacks occurred within the span of five days.
So it’s understandable, then, that most Jews in these communities have mostly been trying desperately to simply be heard about what is occurring to them. They want it to be a straightforward narrative: Jews are getting attacked, often in the most violent of ways that don’t include murder, and it needs to be discussed.
They have been somewhat successful. For the first time in a while, anti-Semitism against orthodox Jews in Brooklyn started to get mainstream attention from media outlets like the New York Times and CNN. And New York Mayor Bill de Blasio promised to dedicate police efforts to finding the man who beat the Crown Heights Chasid with a stone in a park.
But there are a number of vexing questions surrounding these attacks:
First of all, why haven’t they been covered properly by the media until now (and it could be easily argued that they still aren’t being covered properly)?
These attacks are not new, so why have they suddenly arisen?
There is a segment of these attackers – black non-Jews - who do not fit the typical demographic of the narratives we have around anti-Semitic attacks. To be clear, the number is actually lower than most people think: only about a third of those arrested for antisemitic incidents are black. But in communities like Crown Heights, where Chasidim live in predominantly black areas, the issue is particularly stark.
Why is that?
Interestingly enough, we can actually glean an understanding about how to approach these questions by seeing how they are connected.
As the attacks against Orthodox Jews had heated up, a journalist at a prominent public radio station asked to interview me to hear my thoughts about the anti-Semitism in Crown Heights.
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Unlike white nationalism, there is no one ideology or movement that is targeting Jews in Brooklyn, especially among non-Jewish people of colour. We cannot point at a group of people and say, 'those are the bad guys'.
As we started talking, though, it became clear that although he had come into the discussion with a sincere hope to do a straightforward piece about anti-Semitism in Brooklyn, the details were simply too much to include in one radio show.
How was it possible to cover anti-Semitism in Crown Heights without also discussing the tension that exists here between the two communities? And that means discussing their history, the ways that tribalism and segregation between communities feed into the issue, the riot that has left deep scars in both communities, the effect policing has on all of this, and the rise of gentrification.
I could hear his voice suddenly sounding much more insecure, unaware that he had unwittingly stepped into a much bigger story than he had expected. He told me he was probably going to end up just doing profiles of the individuals that were targeted.
This is, in many ways, an insightful microcosm of the media’s relationship to this story. Unlike white nationalism, there is no one ideology or movement that is targeting Jews in Brooklyn, especially among non-Jewish people of colour.
We cannot point at a group of people and say, “those are the bad guys,” and end it there (although there are many who do, sadly, and it is one reason there is a racism epidemic among Chasidic Jews in Brooklyn).
This makes it an almost impossible story to tell.
For example, your instinct might be to say, “that’s not fair. There are people being beaten in the streets. What we need to do is get the word out and stop confusing matters. In fact, the more you talk about all these other factors, the more you sound like you’re blaming the victims - Jews.”
Fair enough, Jews are absolutely getting hurt, and we must speak about it. But it is impossible to tell these stories without also delving into the why. And unfortunately, the why includes all these matters and more.
This is why, unfortunately, so many journalists end up veering away from this story, as important as it may be.
There are, of course, other reasons: bias against Orthodox Jews, a preference to cover the anti-Semitism that is actually getting Jews killed like mass shootings, and a simple refusal to acknowledge that there are forms of anti-Semitism that don’t only come from right wing extremists.
But it is more than that. For example, it is simply impossible to delve into the reasons of the rise in anti-Semitic incidents without discussing gentrification. It is no coincidence that in places like Crown Heights, where people who have been living here for generations feel like they’re being kicked out of their neighbourhoods by powerful and rich people (all very true), that this anger then would spill out against Jews, the easy and obvious targets for scapegoats.
Again, this sounds like mitigation or rationalisation for anti-Semitism. I do not believe it is: without understanding bigotry, we can’t combat it.
The most important, and difficult, part of this story is that, ultimately, there are no “bad guys” to point to. The influence of Louis Farrakhan (the firebrand Nation of Islam leader and famous anti-Semite who has often been blamed for anti-Semitism in black communities) is often overstated, and so rather what we are discussing is a far more tangled web of history, cultural dynamics, and economic disenfranchisement.
Which leads to the answer to a question that has been underlying this discussion: how do we stop these incidents?
Perhaps the main reason this story is so under-told is that the answers to such questions are not the ones people want to hear.
When there are no bad guys, there are only people. This means that there is no one solution, and that the solutions most likely can’t be punitive. Increasing policing does little to nothing to end bigotry, and it’s likely that it feeds it. Rather, the only way forward is for the communities to work together to solve it, something that is, sadly, not happening.
But this is the nature of Brooklyn’s anti-Semitism scourge. It is not simple, and thus its answers aren’t simple.
No wonder people don’t want to talk about it.
READ MORE
What is causing the spike in anti-Semitic attacks in Brooklyn? (Jerusalem Post)
City officials say more than education is needed to stop the rash of attacks, which have spiked across this city in 2019. That’s because the problem is hard to diagnose
Photo: Orthodox Jewish men walk past a 'Crown Heights Shmira Patrol' security vehicles in Crown Heights in February 2019 (Angela Weiss / AFP)
