Jewish man spat on, cursed in Brooklyn in latest NYC antisemitic attack

ADL reported on a 55 percent spike in violent assaults on Jews in New York state in 2018 over the previous year’s figures.

By JEREMY SHARON
A man walks past the world headquarters of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, the scene of a stabbing at the Brooklyn synagogue in New York City December 9, 2014. New York police shot and killed a man armed with a knife early Tuesday after he stabbed a rabbinical student from Israel in the head in a Bro (photo credit: STEPHANIE KEITH/REUTERS)
A man walks past the world headquarters of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, the scene of a stabbing at the Brooklyn synagogue in New York City December 9, 2014. New York police shot and killed a man armed with a knife early Tuesday after he stabbed a rabbinical student from Israel in the head in a Bro
(photo credit: STEPHANIE KEITH/REUTERS)
In the latest in the ongoing series of incidents of harassment and assault against Jews in New York, a passerby spat at and cursed a Jewish man in Brooklyn on Wednesday, an incident which was captured on video and published on social media.

This latest attack follows another similar incident on Tuesday, when a passerby shouted “f**king Jew” at a Chabad rabbi in Manhattan.
On Wednesday, Jack Blachman, a resident of Brooklyn and a member of the Chabad community, intervened when he saw a passerby yelling at two Jewish girls to get out of his way on the corner of Carroll Street and Albany Avenue.
The same man subsequently turned on Blachman aggressively and shouted at him that Jews had created a cult.
“You Jewish people, yeah, I was once Jewish mother f***er,” he yelled at Blachman. “Y’all created the cult,” he added and spat in Blachman’s face.
Blachman reported the incident on his cell phone to the New York Police Department’s 71 Precinct while following the man, and the police promptly arrived to take a statement from the assailant and Blachman.
Blachman told The Jerusalem Post that the police has said to him spitting does not carry assault charges and that he could therefore only file a complaint of harassment.
This assault is the latest in a wave of violent attacks on Jews in New York City, particularly in the borough of Brooklyn.
In Tuesday’s incident, Vigler was on his way to the morning prayer service when he was accosted by a passerby who called him “a f***ing Jew.”
Vigler told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that after he moved to the other side of the street the man followed him and asked him “Are you nervous? Are you scared?”
As Vigler approached his synagogue he said the man lunged at him, but that he then backed away when he saw the synagogue’s security guard.
A video Vigler posted showed the man walking off and calling him “the devil,” from a distance.
Earlier this week, the Anti-Defamation League published statistics showing that 17 of the 39 incidents of physical assault against Jews nation-wide in 2018, happened in the state of New York, amounting to some 43% of all such assault.
In 2017 there were 11 reported incidents of physical assault against Jews in New York, meaning that 2018 saw a 55% increase in such incidents in the state.
Although the incidence of physical assault in New York appears to be on the rise, the number of incidents of harassment and vandalism against Jews and Jewish property was actually down in 2018 over the previous years figures.
There were 111 incidents of harassment in the state in 2018, compared to 133 in 2017, and 212 incidents of vandalism against Jewish property in 2018, compared to 237 in 2017.
The total number of antisemitic incidents, therefore, decreased in New York from 381 in 2017 to 340 in 2018, a decrease of nearly 11%.