Many of the 10,000 Hasidic Jews of the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, N.Y., live in poverty. They are subject to frequent violent crimes such as muggings, robbery and vandalism and murder from criminal elements of the neighboring Black community of 30,000.
They suffer anti-Semitic insults and curses not only from the neighboring Blacks, but also from some police officers and other New York City employees.
But despite this grim scene described by Rabbi Yisroel Rosenfeld, director of the Jewish Community Council of Crown Heights, the plight of these Jews is being ignored by the city, Jewish organizations and “everybody else,” he contended.
SAYS THEY’VE FORGOTTEN
His voice expressing anger and pain, Rosenfeld charged that American Jewish organizations “have forgotten” Crown Heights. The heavy-set rabbi addressed on Tuesday some 80 city officials, Black and Jewish leaders and officers of the local 71st Precinct who attended a conference on interethnic concerns at the Oholei Torah Jewish Center in Crown Heights.
“Our people live in slums. They are being raped, murdered and mugged and American Jewish leaders do nothing to help us,” Rosenfeld cried out. He complained that while Jewish organizations and Jewish leaders sent many letters of condolences to the family of Michael Griffith, the black youth who was murdered recently by white youths in the Howard Beach section of Queens, N.Y., not even one Jewish leader or organization sent a letter to the Jewish community of Crown Heights in the wake of the murder of two Hasidic Jews in separate incidents in the area several months ago.
The two victims were Yisroel Rosen, a native of Australia who came to visit his son in Crown Heights and who was beaten to death reportedly by six Black teenagers at a subway station; and Shlomo Fishman, a homeless elderly man who was stabbed about 17 times by unknown assailants. The murderers in both cases are still at large.
CHARGES DENIED
However, Michael Miller, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, denied Wednesday the charge that the Hasids of Crown Heights are ignored by the entire organized Jewish community here.
“We worked closely with Rabbi Rosenfeld in the past and we look forward to cooperating on joint ventures in the future. With the scarce resources at our disposal we will continue to make every effort to provide services to needy communities throughout the metropolitan area, Miller stated to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Noting that the Jewish community is a “friend of the police,” Rosenfeld said, however, that “very often when a Jewish man is arrested and the arresting officer is Black, the Jew faces terrible racial slurs.” According to Rosenfeld, Jewish prisoners are also attacked and beaten by Black prisoners, and the police officers in some cases do not intervene.
Obscene anti-Semitic slurs also come from officers of the Department of Traffic and the Department of Sanitation, Rosenfeld charged.
The rabbi also was critical of New York City and its Mayor, Edward Koch. “The Mayor was here last week and I told him that all we get from the city is lip service. Nobody in government really encourages integration and equality. We ‘live integration’ with our black brothers and sisters in Crown Heights. The government has done nothing at all to encourage integration,” by providing affordable housing and funds for social services, Rosenfeld said.
Koch’s office did not return JTA’s phone call Wednesday.
BLACK LEADERS AGREE
Enoch Williams, a New York City councilman who is Black, warned that the racial tension in Crown Heights has reached a dangerous level. “We are in for a long, hot summer,” he warned, calling for an open, continued dialogue between the Black and Jewish communities to avert a major racial crisis.
“If we do not reach out and talk to people we are going to have chaos,” he said, adding that the conference Tuesday is a welcome start for such a dialogue.
Councilwoman Merry Pink, who also is Black, said that “Black people are not anti-Semites.” She urged continued rapport between Jews and Blacks in order to achieve an integrated community in Crown Heights.
Roy Innis, chairman of the Congress for Racial Equality, said he wished more Blacks were at the conference “to hear the rabbi’s pain …We’ve got to become more sensitive to the pain of the other guys.”
He charged that both the Black elite and the Jewish elite in America ignore the plight of Crown Heights. “We are both (Blacks and Jews) deceived and seduced by the media,” he said, adding that he found in Rosenfeld “a real partner” to tell the truth about Crown Heights.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
