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| The 4 victims of a brutal antisemitic attack (Daily Mail) |
As in the past, I cannot begin to imagine the pain of the families that suddenly lost loved ones. Especially in this way.
The first one murdered was Jersey City police officer Detective Joseph Seals, a 39 year old married father of five. Shortly thereafter Anderson and Graham made their way to their intended target – a Kosher store in Jersey City. That’s when the rest of their killing spree accelerated – ending with the following victims:
Douglas Miguel Rodriguez Barzola, who left behind a wife and an 11 year old daughter; Leah Minda Ferencz, 33 year old mother who owned the store with her husband; and 24 year old Moshe Deutsch. He had just Davened Mincha in the Shul next door and was on his way into the store when his life suddenly ended!
There are no words. People in the prime of their life with everything to live for being gunned down for no reason except that two rabid antisemites were looking to kill Jews! Hard to contemplate.
There are some who might be tempted to say that the increasing number of violent antisemitic events give lie to the fact that America is different. There are those that might say that this proves that the famous words of Rashi in this week’s Parsha of Vayishlach that declares: Esav Sonei L’Ya’akov. Words that have been famously interpreted to mean that Jews will always be hated by non Jews. Words most recently cited by Rabbi Ron Yitzchok Eisenman in his weekly distributed The Short Vort. It was cited in reaction to this event as an explanation for the inexplicable.
I am a huge fan of Rabbi Eisenman. But I must object to such characterizations about the American people. I still firmly believe that the vast majority of Americans reject antisemitism in all of its manifestations. They are as abhorred by what happened here as any one of us is. How can I say this after such a horrible event? Which has followed other relatively recent horrible events like it?
I say it for the same reasons I have always been saying it. That antisemitic attacks have increased does not mean more Americans have become antisemitic. I think the opposite is true. If anything I believe the sympathy the vast majority of Americans have for us has actually increased. I believe that most Americans are more outraged by these acts than ever before.
As I have said many times, there is so much evidence against the notion that Esav Sonei L’Ya’akov describes Americans – that it would take volumes to cite all the examples of it. But let me cite the obvious example of Jersey City itself. Whose mayor, Steven Fulop is the son of Holocaust survivors. And yet they voted for a Jewish man to serve as the head of city government. To the best of my knowledge, Jersey City is not known for its Jewish residents.
If that isn’t enough, let us examine the neighborhood itself. There were no Jews to speak of in that neighborhood (Greenville) before the approximately 100 Satmar families relocated there from their old more crowed and more expensive neighborhood of Williamsburg in Brooklyn. From JTA:
The grocery store is on Martin Luther King Drive, one of the neighborhood’s central thoroughfares. Down the street is a Pentecostal church, a mosque and a string of businesses. The surrounding blocks are full of row houses in a rainbow of colors along with some empty lots. Broken bottles and litter line the streets.
Jersey City residents say the area has been gentrifying, with a boom in new construction in the past few years. Douglas Harmon, 43, a lifetime Greenville resident and local building contractor, said most of the new arrivals are Jewish families.
Harmon said that he and other locals have had a good relationship with their new neighbors, though gentrification has increased tensions in the area.
In a video circulated Wednesday in Hasidic group text messages, Harmon offered to help clean out the store for free and offered his best wishes to the Jewish community
“The people walking past every day, they don’t have any problem [with the Jewish community],” Harmon told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “As long as you’re a good person, good people are respected wherever they go.”
Doesn't that say it all? If this isn’t an example of the Amercian way, I don’t know what is.