A Day After Midtown Stabbing, Young Rabbi Is Back in Diamond District
by Tzali Reicher – chabad.org
Less than 24 hours after a woman followed him along a Manhattan sidewalk and stabbed him in the back, Chabad rabbinical student Yosef was back in Midtown dropping in on Jewish merchants and craftsmen in the Diamond District to help them don tefillin.
The attack, in which the unknown assailant plunged what is believed to be a large syringe into his back, left him bloody but not afraid.
The 26-year-old Brooklyn resident, who recently received his rabbinic ordination, makes the trip from Crown Heights to Midtown every day, helping Jewish men put on tefillin and encouraging those he meets to take on other mitzvahs and shares Torah teachings.
Yosef was walking on West 47th Street in Manhattan’s heavily-Jewish Diamond District shortly before 6 p.m. on Wednesday when he noticed a woman stalking him. Surveillance video later posted online shows the woman ignoring other pedestrians and keeping close behind him as he tried to put a parked car between them.
As Yosef stepped out into the street, he felt a sharp pain in his lower right back. He was taken to Bellevue Hospital, while police are investigating the incident as a hate crime and are still searching for the woman.
The woman was seen pursuing another visibly Jewish man prior to following Yosef.
By Thursday he had returned to the same blocks and resumed the work of uplifting Jewish people at the businesses he regularly visits.
“I’m still shaken,” Yosef told Chabad.org from 47th Street. “I never imagined I’d be stabbed simply for being Jewish, right here in New York City. But as I try to make sense of what happened, I keep thinking about my grandparents. They survived the Holocaust, experienced the worst of hatred, and still went on to build a proud Jewish family. I know what they’d tell me now: Don’t back down. Go back out there and help another Jew put on tefillin. Do another mitzvah. Stand taller and prouder than ever. That’s why I came back today. Their answer to hatred was more Jewish life. Mine will be too. We’ll never back down. We’ll just keep spreading more light.”
