Monsey has been the kind of place where mothers send their kids out to ride bikes or around the corner to play at a friend’s house without worrying, she said: It’s “an insular, safer community.” Recently, however, as Hasidic enclaves have grown in size, local community members have clashed over issues such as traffic and taxes. Still, the suburbs of Rockland County have continued to feel somewhat removed from the violence, Rivkie Feiner, another local community organizer, told me. Incidents have included graffiti sprayed on the walls of Jewish schools, men stabbed on their way to synagogue, and verbal and physical harassment following a measles outbreak earlier this year. “We’re seeing more and more assaults,” he said. But Evan Bernstein, the New York–New Jersey regional director at the Anti-Defamation League, told me he has seen the situation “ramping up” over the past few years. Orthodox Jews, who are usually visibly identifiable by the way they dress and the geographically concentrated nature of their communities, have often been the targets. There has always been anti-Semitism in New York City. “It doesn’t matter who you are what your religious affiliation is. “I think the reality is seeping in,” Bernstein said. The Monsey attack could mark a fundamental turning point for Jews in New York, and across the country: Jews are being targeted for violence, whether they live in the heart of Brooklyn or the suburbs of Rockland County, where Monsey is located. There have been at least 13 anti-Semitic incidents in New York State since early December, according to Governor Andrew Cuomo, and at least 10 in the New York–New Jersey area in the past week alone, according to the Anti-Defamation League. Less than three weeks ago, a pair of assailants allegedly murdered two Jews, a law-enforcement officer, and a clerk at a kosher grocery store in Jersey City, New Jersey. But the Monsey stabbing is just the latest in an escalating drumbeat of violence in the area. Here, of all places, Jews should feel safe. By comparison, Jews make up roughly 2 percent of the United States population as a whole. Now, according to researchers at Brandeis University, roughly 1.7 million Jews live in the metropolitan area, nearly 10 percent of the population. At one point, they made up as much as a quarter of its population. Jews have been in New York since before the city got its name, and have deeply influenced its culture. “It’s tapping into every fear.” Part of the shock is that this happened in Monsey, a densely Jewish community just north of New York City, in the metropolitan area that is home to the largest population of Jews outside of Israel. “There’s a lot of horror,” Shoshana Bernstein, a community organizer and mother who lives in Monsey, told me. As of midday Sunday, according to law enforcement, two victims were still in the hospital. Five people were reportedly stabbed and wounded. A gathering of Hasidic Jews at the home of a rabbi in Monsey, New York, instead turned into a nightmare when a man wielding a large knife rushed in and began attacking. Saturday was the seventh night of Hanukkah, a holiday normally celebrated with singing and fried foods and the soft glow of lit menorahs.
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