Following a rash of anti-Semitic violence in recent weeks, Brooklyn elected officials are calling for dialogue and camaraderie between the borough’s black and Jewish populations.
At a press conference on Monday, Congressman Hakeem Jeffries and Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams joined faith leaders to announce a series of dinners called "Breaking Bread and Building Bonds." The new initiative seeks to bridge ethnic and racial divides through dinner parties hosted by small groups of "ambassadors."
One of the first of 100 planned meetings will be held in South Brooklyn, according to Jeffries, who pointed to the large number of Russian Jews and black residents in the area who don't typically interact.
"We're a diverse borough but we live in our insulated silos," noted Adams. "At the heart of the violence and increase in hate crimes—particularly against the Jewish community—is a failure to appreciate, communicate and acknowledge our coexistence."
Adams said the preventative approach should be accompanied by an expanded NYPD presence in certain neighborhoods, but added that, "We’re not going to be able to police ourselves out of this problem." He rejected calls to bring in the National Guard, as some Orthodox lawmakers have called for in the wake of this weekend's stabbing at a Rockland County Hannukah celebration.
In that incident, like the Jersey City shooting earlier this month, the attacker appears to have been motivated by anti-Semitism. A federal complaint details how the stabbing suspect, Grafton Thomas, scrawled "Adolf Hitler" and swastikas in a notebook, and searched online for "Zionist Temples" in various areas, including Staten Island. His family has said he was suffering from mental illness, and had shown no previous signs of bigoted views.
Across the city, anti-Semitic incidents have jumped more than 50 percent since this time year, according to NYPD data.
Rabbi Abe Friedman, a Williamsburg resident, said he feared the two communities were sliding back to the frictions of decades past, when the Crown Heights riots laid bare the deep divisions between the neighborhood's black and Lubavitch Jewish populations.
"There's a sense of fear, that for years we came a long way, but now we're going back," he said. "It's very painful."
Some of those incidents, like a teenager drawing a swastika, may be traumatic for the community, while seeming like no big deal for the perpetrators, according to Friedman. Combatting such incidents will involve both enforcement and education, he said. This weekend, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced plans to update public school curriculum to emphasize the historical role of anti-Semitism.
"There is a perception that the [Orthodox] community comes in and is isolated, so I think we need to explain ourselves more—our religious customs, our garb," Friedman added. "A little silly thing like knocking off someone's hat can bring back memories of Nazi Germany."
