Anti-Semitic Attacks Rise in NYC

One video showed a 51-year-old Jewish man being beaten to the ground by three young men, who seemed to select him at random. Another showed an Orthodox Jewish man being chased across the street by a man wielding a tree branch. A third showed an Orthodox Jewish man hanging on to a fence as an assailant jumped and choked him.

The three incidents, all of which took place in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, in the past year, have raised alarms in the neighborhood and in the city’s large Orthodox Jewish community as a whole. Hate crimes are up citywide, but in Crown Heights, they have taken a particularly violent turn.

There were 55 hate crimes reported in New York City this year as of Feb. 17, an increase of 72 percent over the same period last year, the police said. Anti-Semitic crimes made up almost two-thirds of that, for a total of 36 crimes reported so far this year, compared with 21 last year.

The steep rise comes after a year when hate crimes were already increasing. Anti-Semitic crimes in 2018 were up 22 percent compared with 2017.