(JTA) — A Jewish man was attacked in an apparently anti-Semitic incident in New York over the weekend.
The attack comes days after the New York Police Department reported that more than half of all hate crimes reported in 2018 and so far in 2019 were anti-Jewish.
In the weekend incident, according to the New York Post, the unnamed victim, who was visibly Jewish, was punched in the back of the head while walking in the heavily Hasidic Williamsburg section. The attacker was reported to have called the man a “f***ing Jew.”
Over the past week, Brooklyn community activist Yaakov Behrman tweeted a video of a man harassing a Jewish passer-by and New York Times columnist Bret Stephens posted about witnessing an incident on Manhattan’s First Avenue.
Just happened: Crown Heights resident Jack Blachman confronts male harassing 2 Jewish children on Carroll and Albany. Perp screams “Jews are all the same…you invented the cult”, and spat in Jack’s face. Words matter. Thank you Jack for standing proud! pic.twitter.com/Lonu2ti4d9
— Yaacov Behrman (@ChabadLubavitch) May 1, 2019
At about the same time, an Upper East Side rabbi filmed a man lunging at him and yelling anti-Semitic slurs.
Last week, the NYPD reported that of the 145 hate crimes reported in January through April 2019, 82 incidents – nearly 57 percent – were anti-Jewish. Three precincts with large Hasidic populations, all in Brooklyn and including Williamsburg, reported the most anti-Jewish hate crimes in 2018.
