Daily Archives: August 8, 2005

Police Investigate New Hate Crimes

NEW YORK, NY, August 08, 2005 — Police are investigating another bias attack in the city.

A 29-year-old black man was beaten and robbed in Brooklyn Sunday by a group of whites armed with bats and pipes. Police are labeling it a bias crime.

Police said the victim was assaulted around 1:30 in the morning by a group of six to eight men who were yelling racial slurs. The attackers fled when two passers-by stopped their car and got out.

The man is in serious but stable condition at Brookdale Hospital. Two months ago, in June, 22-year-old Glen Moore was assaulted in the Howard Beach section of Queens in a baseball bat attack that left him with a fractured skull. Two white men were charged with a hate crime for that attack.

The NYPD is investigating two other suspected bias attacks in the city, one in Crown Heights, Brooklyn and one in Chelsea. Since 2000, hate crimes have dropped by forty-four percent in the city. This mirrors the drop in overall crime.

Matisyahus Latest video interview with CNN

Judaism without Jews?

Along the northern coast of Norway, not far from North Cape, Europe’s northernmost point, is the quaint city of Trondheim. There, among the troll dolls and fishing paraphernalia, one discovers a most unusual sight: a synagogue.

Though a minyan is hard to come by – the shul is open only on Friday nights, weather permitting – the president struggles valiantly to keep the institution open. A survivor of Auschwitz, he proudly displays the compact but concise Holocaust Museum housed in the synagogue’s anteroom, and explains that he returned after the war with the express purpose of keeping the tiny shul open.