New York Times Writes Jews out of Crown Heights

by Ira Stoll – Algemeiner

The New York Times has finally achieved what not even the Crown Heights riot could accomplish: eradicating all trace of Jews or Judaism from that Brooklyn neighborhood.

A front-page New York Times news article about Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plan to open more homeless shelters in the city reports:

According to the lawsuit, the city is “foisting yet another” shelter on Crown Heights, a largely West Indian and African-American community, in order to avoid “the vocal criticism of the affluent and largely white citizenry” in other neighborhoods. The matter is to be heard before Justice Katherine A. Levine on Tuesday.

Though gentrifying, Crown Heights remains one of the city’s poorer neighborhoods.

The New York Times itself had accurately reported in its real estate section less than two years ago that the neighborhood “has a populous Lubavitcher Hasidic section.”

That same article, from 2015, also reported, “Single-family homes typically sell for around $800,000 to $1.5 million; two-family homes for $1.2 million to $1.7 million; three-family homes for $1.6 million to $2 million.” One of the city’s “poorer” neighborhoods, indeed.

The New York Jewish Week reported in a 2016 article about Crown Heights that there were approximately “23,800 Jews living there, according to UJA-Federation of New York’s 2011 population study.”

The Times article today doesn’t come right out and call the Jews of Crown Heights interlopers. It doesn’t acknowledge their presence at all. But it’s not difficult to draw that implication. Maybe it’s the lawsuit, not the Times, making the demographic characterization of the neighborhood, but if that is so, the distinction isn’t clear from the sentence in the Times. In any case, if it is the lawsuit making that false characterization, there is no reason for the Times to pass it along uncorrected.

It may seem like a small point. But consider the history of the violent antisemitic riot in the neighborhood in 1991 — a riot that, as former New York Times reporter Ari Goldman wrote, the Times itself failed to cover accurately. Is it really too much to ask today’s New York Times not to omit the Jewish presence from its description of the neighborhood?

Apparently, and unfortunately, it is.

More of Ira Stoll’s media critique, a regular Algemeiner feature, can be found here. 

17 Comments

  • mwws

    the longer it takes the NY Times to get their Karma, the more interesting it becomes.
    they have major karma coming to them.

    • Milhouse

      Since when is karma avoda zara? It’s an ordinary word with no religious connotations or connection at all.

    • Chaim Yankel

      The definition of karma from Merriam-Webster:

      Karma: the force generated by a person’s actions held in Hinduism and Buddhism to perpetuate transmigration and in its ethical consequences to determine the nature of the person’s next existence.

      Internet troll: see Milhouse

    • Milhouse

      What connection do you see between that definition and avoda zara, or indeed any religious idea at all? It’s a simple theory of cause and effect, no religion involved. For that matter, since when do we disagree with it?

    • @ Milhouse

      Hint-du =AZ. We should even say the name of any of these Eastern religions as they are all AZ!
      All their beliefs grew out of their religion. So it’s all treif.
      Milhouse knows that. He just loves seeing his make in print.

  • I don't get it

    Why the outrage or the surprise? This antisemitic rag has Jew-baiting as its main calling.

  • Sam Der Troll

    Eh, check out the NY Times article from today about the Beis Din suit between Basil and Calabria; the second paragraph refers to Crown Heights as an “insular Hasidic neighborhood”, thereby writing the entire West Indian and African-American community out of the neighborhood …

  • karma

    karma is not anymore avodah zora then saying ..what goes around comes around

  • mwws

    true, it is an Indian name, but it means nothing to do with any religion, it is just about as #5 says, ,
    what does around, comes around.
    I think that the zman is ripe for this.

  • Im confused

    It seems to me that we should be more upset about getting another homeless shelter (and all that entails) than we should be about the fact that they didnt mention the chassidic jews of ch? I mean isnt the crime rate here bad enough already?

  • planet CH

    that area of crown heights has how many frum jews? we forget our crown heights is less than a third of he overall neighborhood. real shame is we were too afraid to move across EP back in the day and now have a housing shortage .

  • ch truther

    how many lubabs actually showed up to the meeting? why do we sit and complain online about not having a voice when chanina and co do nothing but line their pockets?

    oh and from the actual article :
    Crown Heights, long a working-class and middle-class community with a history steeped in Caribbean and Hasidic Jewish culture, stands as a still-gentrifying neighborhood with an outsize footprint on Brooklyn just east of Prospect Park and home to some of the borough’s most influential leaders