A Hate Crime In My Hometown

The following is my cover story in the January 9, 2020 edition of the Philadelphia Jewish Link about the heinous anti-Semitic attack in Monsey, NY, and the frightening rise of anti-Semitism in the United States:

A Hate Crime In My Hometown

Members of Rabbi Chaim Rottenberg’s community in Monsey, N.Y., gather in 

front of the house where five people were injured in a knife attack during 

a Hanukkah party. (credit: Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)

I’ve driven down Forshay Road in Monsey hundreds of times. Having grown up in Monsey less than two miles from there, I’ve traveled that road on countless occasions during the course of my lifetime. However, as I drove down Forshay Road on Sunday afternoon, December 29, things were noticeably different. News trucks lined both sides of the street, TV reporters were doing live interviews, and there were hordes of people walking in various directions.

Approximately 15 hours earlier, on Motzei Shabbat, December 28, a man walked into the home of Rabbi Chaim Leibish Rottenberg as people were gathered there to celebrate the seventh night of Chanukah. After entering the rabbi’s home, he unsheathed a large machete and began stabbing people, seriously wounding several of them. The attacker then attempted to enter Rabbi Rottenberg’s shul, Congregation Netzach Yisroel, which is located next door to the rabbi’s home, but thankfully those inside the shul heard the commotion from the house and locked the door, thereby preventing the attacker from getting in and likely saving lives.

The suspect was subsequently arrested in New York City and federal hate crime charges were filed by prosecutors against the alleged attacker.

The heinous and cowardly attack drew instant condemnation from across the political spectrum, both in the United States and Israel, with Prime Minister Netanyahu, President Trump, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and many of the Democratic presidential candidates issuing public statements denouncing the anti-Semitic attack. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo met with Rabbi Rottenberg and called the attack “an act of domestic terrorism,” while a host of elected officials, including Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, Representatives Nita Lowey and Eliot Engel, and NYS Attorney General Letitia James, visited the area and met with local communal and political leaders.

I had the opportunity to speak with Josef Gluck, who was hailed as a hero after the attack and recognized by officials as likely having prevented further injuries in light of his actions as the situation was unfolding. Gluck, whose grandfather first moved to Monsey in 1966, tried to shepherd people away from the machete-wielding attacker in Rabbi Rottenberg’s house, hurled a coffee table at the assailant, and took down his license plate number as he fled the scene, thereby providing law enforcement with valuable information that helped lead to his arrest.

“The Rav just finished hadlakas neiros, saying some Torah and giving out Chanukah gelt, and the guy came in and started hitting people right and left,” he told me as he described the chaotic and terrifying scene. Taking a group of people with him, Gluck ran out through the kitchen, circled back around the front of the building and reentered the house through the front door. In the process, he tried to help Josef Neumann, who remains in critical condition and who doctors fear may never regain consciousness due to the severity of the injuries he sustained at the hands of the attacker.

“I grabbed the coffee table and threw it in his face,” Gluck said. After being struck by the table, the assailant exited the home, as did Gluck. The attacker walked over to Rabbi Rottenberg’s shul next door, but when he looked at the glass doors to the shul and saw that they were locked, he got into his car. As he was pulling away, Gluck took down his license plate number and provided it to the police.

Despite the courage he displayed and his heroics in the face of great adversity, Josef Gluck does not consider himself a hero.

“I went back not to confront the guy; I went back to try to save lives,” he told me. “I went back to see if I could help anyone and save anyone.” When I asked him how he had the presence of mind to take down the attacker’s license plate number as he made his getaway, Gluck demurred yet again. “That was completely hashgacha pratis (divine providence)… I didn’t even think about it,” he humbly said.

In a sign of the faith and resilience of the Orthodox Jewish community, Gluck proudly told me how Rabbi Rottenberg proceeded with a Melave Malka about an hour after the attack. In addition, we spoke about the Hachnasas Sefer Torah celebration that took place outside Rabbi Rottenberg’s home on the Sunday afternoon, the day after the attack, as well as the Chanukah festivities that occurred as scheduled on Sunday night and Monday.

“Life goes on, netzach Yisrael lo yishaker, (the Eternal One of Israel will not lie), we have to keep on doing what we need to do,” he said.

The Monsey attack came in the midst of a rash of anti-Semitic attacks in Brooklyn, NY, in which people were attacking Jews in broad daylight, and in the wake of the deadly shooting at a kosher supermarket in Jersey City.

A report that is forthcoming from the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino reveals that anti-Semitic hate crimes in the nation’s three largest cities, New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, have reached the highest numbers they have seen in the past 18 years. The Anti-Defamation League released a report last spring which found that anti-Semitic assaults throughout the U.S. increased by more than 50% in 2018 and anti-Semitic episodes are near all-time highs.

In light of the uptick in anti-Semitic incidents across the region, several Orthodox Jewish elected officials in New York City – State Senator Simcha Felder, State Assemblymember Simcha Eichenstein, and New York City Councilmembers Chaim Deutsch and Kalman Yeger – made a formal request to NY Governor Andrew Cuomo in which they asked that he declare a state of emergency, appoint a special prosecutor to investigate anti-Semitic hate crimes, and deploy the NY National Guard “to visibly patrol and protect Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods.”

“Simply stated, it is no longer safe to be identifiably Orthodox in the State of New York,” they wrote in their correspondence to the governor. “We cannot shop, walk down a street, send our children to school, or even worship in peace.”

The mere fact that these types of requests have to be made in the United States in 2020 is mind-boggling. Jews feeling as if they have to look over their shoulders when they walk down the street is reminiscent of Nazi Germany in the 1930s, yet that is the reality facing us today.

Examining the root of the problem is critical and assessing how and why anti-Semitism has been allowed to shift from the periphery to the mainstream is absolutely essential. One of the hallmarks of American democracy is the freedom of religion, and we cannot stand idly by as our nation deteriorates into a society where Jews wearing a yarmulke are afraid to walk in the streets, lest they be targeted by hatemongers.

I had the opportunity to speak with Town Supervisor Michael Specht of the Town of Ramapo, in which Monsey is located. As the top elected official in the Town, Supervisor Specht met with Rabbi Rottenberg an hour after the attack in his home.

As the Supervisor of a municipality that has an unusually large population of Orthodox Jews, including a sizable Chassidic community, Supervisor Specht knows all too well the dangers facing the Orthodox community and is cognizant that anti-Semitism is becoming far too common today.

“In Rockland County (where Monsey is located), the anti-Semitic and specifically anti-Chassidic rhetoric that comes from people throughout the county, including elected officials who should know better, stirs it up,” he said referring to the increase in anti-Semitism. “Over the years there’s been an ever-increasing dehumanization of the Orthodox community and a clear pattern of increasingly ugly rhetoric.”

He had sharp criticism of anti-Semitic social media pages “that stigmatize Orthodox Jews, treat them as one monolithic group instead of individual human beings, and ascribe the worst mode of what any Orthodox person does… people read that and it has to have some sort of an effect.” He added that the social media companies need to be more diligent in policing themselves and not allowing hateful anti-Semitic speech on their platforms. “Pressure needs to be put on the social media platforms that monetize this type of speech,” he said.

Supervisor Specht noted that NYS Attorney General Letitia James is forming a group to investigate and address hate on social media. “People who perpetrate this hate have to be held accountable for what they’re saying and doing… We need effective enforcement of hate crime legislation to help deter people from doing this in the future,” he said.

As far as working collaboratively with federal and statewide elected officials on the issue of anti-Semitism, Supervisor Specht said, “My hope is that our federal and state officials will be able to put the resources and public spotlight on this hatefulness and hopefully stigmatize the anti-Semites, instead of the anti-Semites stigmatizing the Jewish community.”

The anti-Semitism disseminated through social media platforms is undoubtedly cause for alarm. People have the unique ability to operate under the cloak of anonymity and feel emboldened to say things that they likely would never say openly. The ability to promulgate prejudice to thousands of people in an instant is a game changer and something that warrants further examination by regulatory agencies and the federal government. Tweeting anti-Semitic tropes and posting prejudiced points of view are ways through which people incite others, and more oversight is needed to curb this dangerous new development that is breeding bigotry on a frightening scale.

In a display of how seriously NJ officials are taking the threats posed by anti-Semitism propagated on social media, just last week, NJ Governor Phil Murphy and Attorney General Gurbir S. Grewal issued a statement concerning anti-Semitic content on a notorious Facebook group called “Rise Up Ocean County.”

“In April 2019, the Director of our Division on Civil Rights, Rachel Wainer Apter, sent a letter to Facebook expressing concerns with a page on the company’s social network entitled ‘Rise Up Ocean County,’” said the Governor and Attorney General. “We had serious concerns with racist and anti-Semitic statements on the page, including an explicit goal of preventing Orthodox Jews from moving to Ocean County, and we made clear our view that the page appeared to violate Facebook’s terms of service. We have continued to follow up with Facebook since that initial letter in April, and we renewed our concerns as recently as this week.”

“We appreciate that Facebook has taken some steps to address anti-Semitic content on the page, but much more can be done, and we believe that Facebook must make lasting reforms to stop the spread of hate on the Internet,” they added. “The Murphy Administration will continue to call out hate whenever and wherever we see it, and we will continue working to make New Jersey a safe and inclusive place for all of our residents.”

As I contemplated what happened in Monsey and what has been taking place in far too many Jewish communities far too often, I considered not just how we got to this point, but how we, as a community and as a society, must respond.

There is no question that the frightening factors surrounding the recent rash of anti-Semitic attacks in the United States must be addressed swiftly and substantively by the people in power who have the wherewithal to effectuate change. Rather than being reactive and making public statements condemning violent incidents of religious intolerance after they have occurred, our political and communal leaders must focus on being more proactive and taking significant steps to preempt future attacks. We need to get ahead of this crisis and prevent it from spiraling further out of control.

In addition, we need to broaden our perspective and look outward for help. The Jewish community should not have to combat bigotry solely by ourselves. Anti-Semitism has indeed become far too prevalent and we need to work collaboratively – Jews and non-Jews alike – to extinguish the firestorm of hatred and bigotry that has engulfed our nation. Improved education, enhanced deterrents and greater vigilance are key ingredients to ensuring that this does not become the “new normal.”

On Sunday afternoon, December 29, less than 24 hours after a man walked into a rabbi’s home and began stabbing Jews, I stood in a shul not too far from the site and davened Mincha. The events of the previous night were foremost in my mind, and I thought about the victims of the attack and prayed that they should have a refuah shleimah. However, as I stood in a shul in Monsey a short distance from the horrific events of the night before, I also davened that these vicious attacks against our community would come to an end. I’m not naïve and I realize that we’re not going to change the world overnight and suddenly eradicate the prejudice that is plaguing our community. Nonetheless, I do believe that we have to start somewhere and the time to do so is now. Only by joining together and speaking in a united voice with a common purpose can we effectively combat anti-Semitism. Like Josef Gluck, who confronted a man with a machete who was intent on killing Jews, we too have to boldly confront those who hate us and say loudly and clearly, “Never Again.”