The incidents now pass without much notice, a steady, familiar drumbeat of violence and hate targeting visibly Jewish people in New York City.<\/p>\n
Early on the morning of June 15, a Saturday, two men in a white Infiniti drove around Borough Park, a vast, traditional Orthodox Jewish neighborhood in central Brooklyn. Surveillance footage<\/a> posted on the local website BoroPark24 showed a man jumping out of the car\u2019s passenger side as someone in a shtreimel<\/em> and long black jacket walked down the sidewalk in their direction. As the car idled, the passenger approached the Jewish stranger, lunged at him in a linebacker-like stutter-step, and then darted to the waiting vehicle, which promptly sped away. Levi Yitzhak Leifer, head of the Borough Park Shmira neighborhood patrol, said there were at least six and as many as nine reported incidents that night involving the same vehicle. Beresch Freilich, a rabbi who serves as a community liaison with the NYPD in Borough Park, said that some of the targeted individuals sensed a violent intent: \u201cThe car passed by going back and forth, and they felt it was trying to run them over.\u201d<\/p>\n On a Saturday night in mid-January, Steven, a student and member of the Chabad Hasidic movement in his late teens, was returning to his apartment on Empire Avenue after a trip to the gym. (Nearly all victims interviewed for this piece asked to be identified by first name only, due to their involvement in ongoing legal cases). Steven saw what he described as a \u201crowdy group\u201d of between six and eight \u201colder teens\u201d gathered on the sidewalk on a poorly lit stretch between Schenectady and Troy avenues. One of the teens sucker punched Steven in the back of the head as he walked past. \u201cAt first I honestly thought a car ran into me\u2014it was such a blow.\u201d Steven was then struck in his right cheek and fell to the sidewalk. He realized he was outnumbered but some irrational part of him couldn\u2019t accept the insult.<\/p>\n \u201cI charged towards them like in a frenzy, with blood on my hands and my face, and I started trying to give him a thing or two,\u201d he remembered of his run toward his main attacker. They exchanged a few blows before the entire group fled. The teens made no attempt to rob Steven, and there was no clear motive for the assault. In retrospect, given the force of the first strike against a vulnerable spot on his head, Steven thinks the attack could have gone much worse for him. \u201cI was very, very lucky,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Read it all<\/a>.<\/p>\n .\u2066@tabletmag<\/a>\u2069: \u201cAs the leading targets of hate crimes, Jews are routinely being attacked in the streets of New York City. So why is no one acting like it\u2019s a big deal?\u201d https:\/\/t.co\/el6crKExeM<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) July 17, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n