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In Light of Anti-Semitic Attacks, What Can You Do to Help?
In light of the most recent anti-Semitic attack in a suburb of New York City, where a man broke into the home of a prominent rabbi holding a Hanukkah celebration with a machete, I’ve heard from many friends “What can I do to help?” I wanted to offer some tangible suggestions for those horrified by the slow-moving pogrom happening in New York City and wishing to act:
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- Contact your local Jewish community and ask if they would accept volunteers from outside the community to provide security.
- The cost of upgrading security has been enormous for many Jewish institutions across the country. Off-duty police officers are paid to work shifts on holidays and on Shabbat, but many buildings have undergone serious renovations to install new security systems, panic buttons, auto-locking doors, new windows, and more. Consider donating to your local synagogue, Jewish community center, Hillel, schools or Jewish Federation’s security fund.
- Another worthwhile organization worth noting is the Community Security Service. You can donate to their efforts to train Jews to protect their community, or contact them to ask how you can get involved in their work.
- Shop at Kosher supermarkets and restaurants. It’s a scary time to run a business that is a potential terror target, and it’s encouraging for those working there to have the support of the wider community.
- Contact your local representatives and ask them to step up to the plate, especially if you live in a district with a Jewish population.
- Lend support and encouragement to officials doing the right thing, like here:
This morning @NYSenatorFelder, Assemblyman @SEichenstein, Councilman @ChaimDeutsch and I sent this letter to @NYGovCuomo.
We're asking for the State Police and NY National Guard to be deployed to our neighborhoods, and for a special prosecutor to prosecute antisemitic violence. pic.twitter.com/EVh8BjwpjT— Kalman Yeger (@KalmanYeger) December 29, 2019
7. And hold feet to the fire of politicians who refuse to do more than tweet (if they’re even doing that).
8. Encourage your faith leaders to take a stand and give them ideas of what that looks like: a statement to the congregation, a joint-vigil or gathering with the local Jewish community, or merely a public statement of support.
9. When you see biased or toxic representations of Jews in popular culture, the media, or in your daily life, say something. Dehumanizing Jews is a root cause of the violence we’re now seeing.
A few more suggestions from my Twitter followers:
I’m going to volunteer my services – for security, and the appearance of security – at my local Synagogue. I called and left a vm earlier.
However they need, I’m there. I’ll help walk people home, and/or provide static or plain clothes security…just ‘stand in the gap’
— Jared (@jaredstill) December 29, 2019
Speak out. Say something. Don’t let the conversation or lack of die out. Post, share, like the news when these things keep happening. Let it be known this won’t be accepted as the new normal.
— Rina Haller (@rinabracha) December 29, 2019
Pressuring our politicians to fight the anti semitism would be the best way
— Mike James (@MikeJamesNYC) December 29, 2019
Stand up for obvious Jews when obviously disturbed people verbally harass and assault us in public places about “Jesus killers” and the “real Jews” and all that. Polite society usually just ignores – esp when the perpetrator is lower on the intersectionality pole.
— OnTheBench (@Huerts31) December 29, 2019
As a Catholic I intend to pray the rosary today for the victims. But I can assure you if I see or witness something I have no intention of being silent. Anti-Semitism needs to be dealt with through action not words.
— Jacob Descheneaux (@SpartacusX86) December 29, 2019
Not Jewish – but a new Daf Yomi cycle starts January 5. Understanding the Orthodox dedication to learning Talmud is probably a good place to start.
— Jennings DePriest (@jenningslawton) December 29, 2019
Do you have any other ideas? Leave them the comments.
Published in General
That’s probably a good idea. Just flood them with lots of small donations. That might mean a lot.
Two small things. I joined a Jewish friend at her home for the lighting of the seventh candle of the menorah yesterday, and I saved Bret Stephen’s NYT column for her.
Is the problem mostly in New York City, or are other areas affected? I live in Chicago, and I haven’t heard of any attacks.
Is it my imagination, or is the level of anti-semitism in a community proportional to the number of elected Democrat politicians? Just sayin’ . . .
Yes. Because it is Democrats who Re the antisemites.
Thank you for this post, Bethany.
I understand the emotional reaction. I do not think that it is fair to claim that there is a “slow-moving pogrom happening in New York City.” This particular, terrible attack did not occur in NYC, nor did the terrible Jersey City murders a couple of weeks ago.
Susan’s post on the same issue quoted statistics on “anti-Semitic hate crimes” indicating that the levels, even in NYC, were extremely low — about 1 per 100,000 residents, a total of 33 in 2018, and this was for a broad category that appears to consist mostly of property vandalism and harassment.
The numbers are relatively low because the Orthodox Jews are a tiny part of the community. Are you suggesting that the crime is not all that important because it’s “only” vandalism and harassment?
I’d go for the Texas solution. Unfortunately Texas is a civilized state, while New York and New Jersey are devolving to feudalism.
That is shocking to watch, @seawriter, and scores even more points with me that people should carry when they go to church. Sad but true.
Carrying in church is legal in Texas, unless the church specifically bans it. Or a synagogue.
Promote open and concealed carry.
Jews should not be victims. If we can defend ourselves, then it is best for us to do so.
I am close to an observant Jewish woman who just got her HQL, primarily because of synagogue security concerns. The mens’ side has several prepared men – but the other side of the mechitza was defenseless until now.
Yes, of course I’m suggesting this.
Are you suggesting that vandalism or name-calling should be treated with equal importance as homicide, or rape, or other seriously violent crime?
There’s quite a bit of serious, violent crime in the country. The victims are disproportionately black, not Jewish. Police departments have limited resources, and should be devoting their efforts to the more serious crime.
Also, what makes you think that the reports of “anti-Semitic hate crimes” apply only to Orthodox Jews? I did not see any such limitation in the data that you cited (in your other post), but perhaps that part wasn’t quoted. The larger point is that I see no evidence — none whatsoever — of a serious problem of violent crime directed against Jews in this country. If you have such evidence — not anecdote, not isolated incidents, but statistical evidence — please cite it.
There was a terrible attack at a Hanukkah celebration outside NYC on Saturday. Thankfully, no one was killed, and the police promptly apprehended the suspect.
There was a terrible attack yesterday at a Christian church near Fort Worth, Texas, killing two innocent people. The suspect was killed by a volunteer church security guard. We have such volunteer security guards at my church, armed, including my son. I wouldn’t mind taking on this task myself, but the church prefers that I volunteer in other capacities.
By the way, I think that Bethany’s ideas are wrong. First, she has no evidence of a serious and systemic problem, as I have indicated here and elsewhere. Second, if Jews really are at heightened risk, the obvious solution is that they should take responsibility for their own protection, as my own son takes responsibility for protecting our church. The Israelis have shown us that Jews can be among the toughest hombres in the world.
It’s been based in NYC, but there were also attacks / vandalism in the LA area and in Pittsburg.
There has been an increase in vandalism across the country.
I live in the southeast U.S., and there’s not a large Jewish population where I am (not a Kosher grocery store in sight, for instance), but I’ll be sure to take action if I do see something anti-Semitic happening. And of course, I can stand up to people that I hear make anti-Semitic remarks, as that could still happen even in this area.
@arizonapatriot , I do think there is reason for concern. Areas in and around New York have seen an uptick in more minor attacks specifically targeting visibly-Jewish places (e.g. synagogues and graveyards) and people, which provide an additionally unnerving context for the major attacks of the past two weeks. At least one of those—the attack on the kosher grocery—clearly targeted the school next door. Had the children not been barricaded inside, the death toll would have been much higher.
Meanwhile, as mentioned elsewhere, there is plenty of evidence that some politicians and ordinary citizens feel comfortable openly blaming Jews and excusing murderers. Taken together with the anti-Semitic garbage coming from the fringe-right and the mainstream-left (BDS, Linda Sarsour, the bystanders by the kosher grocer etc) the strangely incurious media, and the background music provided by the U.N. just down river, singing the same old songs in the same old chorus—18 of 23 condemnatory resolutions by the human rights council were of Israel!— and…yeah. There’s a pattern, here, and it would certainly upset me if I were Jewish. I don’t care if it’s not as bad as Kristallnacht; I think it’s bad enough and I’m not interested in seeing it get worse.
And yes, I support Jews arming themselves—I hope they’re inspired by how swiftly and conclusively the latest wanna-be Dylan Roof was foiled in Texas. And I hope the governments in their various locations fast-track their CWPs.
By the way, I heard that the Guardian Angels are self-deploying to Brooklyn. That seems like an encouraging thing.
GrannyDude, you may be correct, but I haven’t seen significant evidence of an uptick in attacks. Unfortunately, given the state of our media and politics, I’m not inclined to take any such report at face value. Do you have a reliable source for this?
About the Jersey City shooting, I have seen no news report about targeting the school next door. Do you have a good source for this? There was quite a bit of confused and apparently mistaken reporting about this crime, including connections to the Black Hebrew Israelites (who do not appear to have been involved) and a claim by Rashida Tlaib blaming the attack on white supremacy (which was a bit confusing, as the murderers turned out to be black).
The Jersey City shooting definitely sparked an increase in reporting on alleged anti-Semitic attacks in the NYC area. My concern is that an enterprising reporter may have dug up reports of a handful of assaults against Jews, and put together a story suggesting a surge in anti-Semitic violence that may, or may not, be real. I’m not questioning the reports themselves, just the significance of a very small number of events (8) in a very large city (over 8 million just in NYC, and around 20 million in the metro area including about 2 million Jews).
Here is one report about the targeting of the school next door. Obviously, since the perpetrators are both dead, we can’t ask them, but surveillance cameras showed one of the gunman trying the door of the school before entering the deli, and they brought a lot of guns plus a relatively sophisticated pipe bomb on their “mission,” which argues they had bigger plans than merely taking out one detective, two Jews and a Central American.
And yes, there has been an increase in attacks on Jews:
“New York City, in particular, is the home to the largest Jewish population in the country and has seen an increase in anti-Semitic incidents, according to the New York Police Department, whose data is included in the FBI report. Community organizations have reported dozens of assaults on Jews in 2018 and 2019, particularly in parts of Brooklyn like Crown Heights, where large populations of religious Jews are easily identified as such by their headgear or clothes.
“We’ve had numerous teeth knocked out, we’ve had broken limbs, bruising—we’re talking about several cases over the past year or so in Crown Heights where there are serious physical injuries,” Crown Heights Jewish Community Council executive director Rabbi Eli Cohen said at a press conference on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, NPR reported that according to the FBI hate crimes dipped slightly in 2018, but violent assaults increased: “The FBI’s annual tally counted 7,120 hate crimes reported last year, 55 fewer than the year before. The main concern for extremism trackers, however, is the rising level of violence — the report showed an increase in the number of “crimes against persons,” such as intimidation, assault and homicide.” Naturally, NPR buried the lede (that Jews are by far the most frequent targets of religiously-motivated attacks) and found someone to quote who would blame the problem on Trump.
As for New York in 2019, it would seem that Anti-Semitic hate crimes are indeed up. Most (87%) are indeed property crimes: “Recent instances have included three swastikas at Pelham Middle School in New York’s Westchester County on Oct. 2 and two youths who threw milk crates into the windows of the Rivnitz shul in Brooklyn on Sept. 30 during Rosh Hashanah services.”
I don’t know about you, but having milk crates come through the window during a worship service wouldn’t feel like mere vandalism to me.
Tlaib is an idiot: these are not white supremacist crimes. ““For the most part, I’m dealing with 311 random individuals of very diverse backgrounds committing these hate crimes against different people,” [Officer] Molinari said, adding that “there aren’t roving bands of white supremacists, from khakis and tiki torches to hood-wearing people” committing hate crimes in New York City.” Duhh.
Weirdly, BTW, “diverse,” just means non-white. I’ve heard the phrase used to describe a single person, as in “He was very diverse.”
It remains to be seen what motivated the church shooter in Texas. If it turns out that his behavior was part of a pattern of aggression directed, over a considerable time, at an identifiable group, then…well, we will all be especially grateful for Texas’ support for the Second Amendment! And wish even more fervently that the Jews in Brooklyn, New Jersey or Philadelphia had such solid options for self-defense.
As for the Monsey attack, it seems that the perpetrator, Grafton Thomas, was at least inspired by the Black Hebrew Israelites and the Jersey City attack, along with the traditional avatars of the anti-Semite: “Based on a court warrant approved Sunday, the FBI searched Thomas’ home and his cellular telephone, finding references to Jews, Hitler, the Nazi culture, as well as packaging for an 18-inch machete, according to the complaint signed by FBI Special Agent Julie Brown.”
In addition: “His cell phone’s internet browser included November and December searches for topics such as “Why did Hitler hate the Jews, German Jewish Temples near me, Zionist Temples in Elizabeth, NJ, Zionist Temples of Staten Island, Prominent companies founded by Jews in America,” according to the complaint.
It is possible that Grafton was also responsible for “the pre-dawn Nov. 20 attack on a Monsey rabbi as he walked to a Howard Drive synagogue just after 5:30 a.m. for morning prayers. No one has been arrested in that knife attack and beating that seriously injured the 30-year-old father of four.”
If not, then there’s another anti-Semite prowling around Moncey with a knife and…issues.
On the day of the attack, Thomas’ phone had a search for the article, “New York City increases Police Presence in Jewish Neighborhoods After Possible Anti-Semitic Attacks. Here’s What To Know.””
The media and Democrats are facilitating antisemitism. They are smothering and downplaying reporting of attacks. Of course you are seeing little evidence of an uptick in attacks, especially since most seem to have been perpetrated by blacks. It does not fit the narrative and therefor viewed as not worthy of coverage.
GrannyDude, thanks for the info. I do not find it convincing, and had seen some of it before.
Your first source was the FBI hate crime report for 2018, which reported a total of 105 violent anti-Semitic crimes in 2018, an increase from 72 in 2017. Those are tiny numbers. The overall FBI crime report for 2018 states that there were 1,206,836 violent crimes in 2018, including 807,410 aggravated assaults and 282,061 robberies.
So violent anti-Semitic crimes constituted 0.0087% of violent crime in 2018. About 1 in every 11,500 violent crimes. Jews are about 2% of the population, so this is quite disproportionately low.
Your second source was a story on anti-Semitic hate crimes in NYC, reporting 163 such crimes from Jan.-Sep. 2019, of which 87% were “generally vandalism involving the drawing of swastikas” and the rest were assaults. Annualized, that works out to about 28 assaults per year. The overall FBI crime report for 2017 for NYC states that there were 29,771 aggravated assaults in the city.
So, even counting every reported anti-Semitic assault in NYC as an aggravated assault, the anti-Semitic assaults constituted 0.094% of aggravated assaults in NYC in 2019. About 1 in every 1,000. Jews are about 12% of the NYC population, so again, this is quite disproportionately low.
This is not evidence of a serious problem of anti-Semitic crime. It is evidence that anti-Semitic crime is not a serious problem, as it is a tiny drop in the bucket of violent crime.
Note that, at present, violent crime rates are quite low and have been generally improving steadily, particularly in NYC but also nationally. There was a relatively small increase at the national level, in 2015 and 2016, possibly in response to less vigorous policing after the Ferguson unrest in 2014.
Obviously, all violent crime is bad. But the claim is that Jews are being specially targeted as victims, with — frankly hysterical — analogies being drawn to the Holocaust. No. This is not true.
Another way of putting this in perspective. Assuming a US Jewish population of 6 million, the reported rate of anti-Semitic violent crime was 1.75 per 100,000. Assuming a US black population of 41 million, the reported rate of murder victimization among US blacks was about 18 per 100,000.
Thus, a black American was 10 times more likely to be murdered than a Jewish American was to be the victim of any anti-Semitic violent crime. Murder, by the way, constitutes about 1.5% of all violent crime, so there are doubtless many times this number of black victims of other violent crimes.
I find this focus on anti-Semitic crime to be very strange.
I want to get back to the OP. I think that these suggestions are ludicrous and hysterical. I have demonstrated, citing the relevant data, that there is not a serious problem with anti-Semitic violence. Perhaps my data sources are inadequate, and I’m willing to consider other data sources.
Obviously, individual and isolated criminal attacks are terrible, and the perpetrators should be duly punished. That’s it.
I’m getting quite frustrated about this. I have the feeling that I’m on the receiving end of another false media narrative, like the lies of the Black Lives Matter movement.
About 29,992 New Yorkers are the victims of aggravated assault, and the city pats itself on the back — rightly, in fact — for its successful effort in reducing violent crime to historically low levels. But 8 Jewish New Yorkers are assaulted — not even aggravated assaults, mind you, just simple assaults for the most part — and . . . what, exactly? Nationwide candlelight vigils? Call out the National Guard?
Are you kidding me?
I say no. I say show me actual, statistical evidence of disproportionate rates of violent crime against Jews, and if you can demonstrate a problem, we can consider measures beyond ordinary law enforcement.
I genuinely sought empirical, statistical data today, to determine whether or not there is a problem with anti-Semitic violent crime. The evidence that I found indicates that there is not. If anything, the evidence that I found suggests that Jewish Americans are considerably less likely to be victimized by violent crime than other groups.
I particularly dislike Bethany’s final suggestion, of strictly policing “bias” because it “dehumanizes” people and is the “root cause of the violence” that is supposedly occurring against Jews (though at a rate vastly lower than the violence suffered by every other demographic group, apparently). This is precisely the argument that the Wokeists use to stifle free speech. No, thank you.
I doubt you will find this. Statistics are now just “science” used to forward Leftist narratives and government goals.
To my own surprise, I think I might agree with you, AP! At least, partly.
First, let me say (in case it wasn’t obvious!) that I am pretty hyper-vigilant about anti-Semitism.
EDIT: One reason that Jews are so underrepresented among the victims of violent crime is that they tend not to attack and kill each other. As you know, black Americans are over-represented as perpetrators and (therefore) as victims.
Next, I’d point out that the eight Jews assaulted (simply or otherwise) were not spread evenly around the city, but concentrated in and around specific areas, and those targeted were so because they were Jews. Most assaults, like most murders, take place between people who have some sort of relationship with one another. It is a lot scarier to live in a neighborhood in which people who share your demographic are being attacked out of the blue by strangers than it is to live with the awareness that some of your neighbors are experiencing domestic violence, or getting into bar fights or whatever.
Having said that, I do think that the Monsey, NJ attack illustrates the issue you’ve raised, A.P.
As with the #BLM martyrs, situations vary and the variations matter. Putting all attacks against Jewish people into a single category may obscure more than it reveals.
As of this morning, I think the category into which the Monsey attack ought to be placed is that of “seriously mentally ill people are not getting the treatment they need, and the results are catastrophic.”
As I used to say to my #BLM-friendly friends and relations: If you want to keep young black men from being shot by the police, scrubbing the last vestiges of racism from the minds of white men is probably the least efficient and effective way to do it. Given that at least a third of the “martyrs” listed by #BLM had diagnosed mental illnesses, addressing mental illness would not only reduce police shootings but would brighten the lives of human beings who suffer without ever coming to the attention of a cop.
I’m not a fan of “hate crime” as a separate legal designation. We don’t punish thoughts, even incredibly stupid ones. But I see no reason why entities and institutions other than the government (e.g. the press) ought not to decry bigotry or seek to emphasize the unacceptability of, in this case, anti-Semitism.
Yes, there is clearly anti-Semitism in some sub-cultures in New York, and yes this is resulting in violence specifically against Jews. Yes, I believe that the crimes committed (with or without “hate”) need to be vigorously prosecuted. Broken windows theory applies here: the kid who throws rocks through the windows of a synagogue this week may very well be the kid who participates in the beating of a Jewish person next week and under the right circumstances he could escalate further, especially if (as seems to be the case in diBlasio’s NYC) he is unlikely to be arrested and, if arrested, is unlikely to be held even overnight. Energetic enforcement of quality of life crimes would help.
Yes, there remains an unacceptably high level of violence within black communities. The application of broken windows theory and community policing, on the one hand, and the provision of comprehensive treatment for the seriously mentally ill on the other would reduce the risk of violence for black New Yorkers as well as Jewish ones. Neither seems on the agenda for the diBlasio administration however.
The Daily Caller has a piece on this, with a video montage of those 2019 attacks caught on camera. “Simple” assault these might be, but I don’t blame residents of these communities for being frightened and angry.