No Arrests Made in Brutal Beating of Orthodox Jewish Brooklyn Man

An Orthodox Jewish man was brutally attacked Wednesday afternoon in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, after getting into an argument about a supposed car accident — adding to the growing number of attacks on Jewish people in the racially diverse neighborhood.

Yosef Hershkop, a 31-year-old community activist in Crown Heights, claimed he was attacked Wednesday in front of his 5-year-old son.

Video footage shared on Twitter appears to show four suspects, two getting out of a white car and two running from down the street, approaching Hershkop’s car before punching him in the face.

Police responded to a 911 call of a robbery Wednesday at approximately 4:45 p.m. by 920 Montgomery Street. Upon arriving, Hershkop reported “four males approached him claiming that he hit their car and demanded money for the accident,” the NYPD said in a statement to National Review.

Hershkop told the suspects he would call 911 about the car accident, after which one suspect been to punch him in the face, causing a “laceration to his lip and a bruise to his face,” according to the NYPD.

He then gave the suspect $100 and the suspect fled in a white sedan. Hershkop was transported to the hospital in stable condition, the NYPD said.

Hershkop was released from the hospital after suffering “extensive facial and oral pain,” along with trauma, according to Yaacov Behrman, a friend of Hershkop publishing the videos on Twitter.

The suspect was described as male and black by the NYPD, and the investigation is still ongoing, with no arrests made.

Geoffrey Davis, an activist and friend of Hershkop, called for the arrest of the suspects responsible.

“This can not be tolerated under any degree,” Davis said in a video address. “How dare you come to this community and assault anyone? We’re not having it in this community and we’re not having it anywhere.”

Crown Heights has had a long history of racial tensions and has recently experienced an uptick in anti-Semitic violence.

In 1991, a three-day riot broke out after a car veered onto the sidewalk and fatally struck 7-year-old Gavin Cato. The suspect behind the wheel of the car was Jewish and Cato was black. Reports indicated that the driver was transported from the scene before Cato, and rumors grew about what transpired at the scene of the accident.

As a result, black residents attacked Jewish residents, looted stores and broke windows for three days.

A Jewish man, Yankel Rosenbaum, was fatally stabbed allegedly by a group of black teenage boys, hours after Cato was killed.

No arrest was ever made in response to the killing of Cato and Limerick Nelson Jr. was sentences to ten years in prison for the stabbing of Rosenbaum.

The events caused prolonged racial tensions within the community, which have recently resurfaced in a series of attacks on the Jewish community.

In May, a suspect punched and kicked a man wearing traditional Jewish clothing in broad daylight in Crown Heights while shouting anti-Semitic remarks.

A group of five suspects hit a 25-year-old Jewish man in the head in Crown Heights while making anti-Semitic remarks in November of 2021. A Jewish man was also victim to a BB gun attack caused by three suspects in October of 2021.

“It’s happening at a rate that we are not used [to],” one Orthodox community leader in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, told National Review in 2019.