We thought we knew what happened in Crown Heights and who did it. Turns out we were wrong.We had the major players right but we were foggy onaction and motivation, even though we had watched scenes from the riot on the nightly news; heard commentary from religious leaders, politicians, and community leaders; and lived through the aftermath listening to everyone’s take on what happened.
Certain facts are not in dispute: In August 1991, seven-year-old Gavin Cato, an African-American, was run over by a van driven by a hasidic Jew in a section of Brooklyn known as Crown Heights, a neighborhood where blacks and hasidim lived side by side but did not interact. Several hours later, Yankel Rosenbaum, an Orthodox Jew from Australia, was assaulted by a band of young African Americans and stabbed several times by at least one of them, Lemrick Nelson. These names are part of our collective memory. The rest of the story, however, takes different shapes depending upon the teller.
Crown Heights riot fact, fiction, and plenty of blame
We thought we knew what happened in Crown Heights and who did it. Turns out we were wrong.
We had the major players right but we were foggy onaction and motivation, even though we had watched scenes from the riot on the nightly news; heard commentary from religious leaders, politicians, and community leaders; and lived through the aftermath listening to everyone’s take on what happened.
Certain facts are not in dispute: In August 1991, seven-year-old Gavin Cato, an African-American, was run over by a van driven by a hasidic Jew in a section of Brooklyn known as Crown Heights, a neighborhood where blacks and hasidim lived side by side but did not interact. Several hours later, Yankel Rosenbaum, an Orthodox Jew from Australia, was assaulted by a band of young African Americans and stabbed several times by at least one of them, Lemrick Nelson. These names are part of our collective memory. The rest of the story, however, takes different shapes depending upon the teller.
Edward S. Shapiro is too skilled a historian to believe that there is one truth, but he is committed to exploring the varying narratives, examining the language of each, and skewering the biases in Crown Heights: Blacks, Jews, and the 1991 Brooklyn Riot (University Press of New England), the first and only book on the first and only anti-Jewish riot in American history.
For the author, the research and writing of this book fed into one of his major interests. Although he has lived in West Orange since 1969, where he and his wife, Daryl, belong to Congregation Ohr Torah and Congregation Ahawas Achim B’nai Jacob and David, cities fascinate him. “I have always been interested in ethnic history, immigrant history,” Shapiro said. “I love to walk around neighborhoods, look into restaurants, see how people are dressed.” In this book, he has dug a little deeper, looking beyond exterior surfaces to show how a neighborhood works — or fails to work.
“The riot was a surprise to everyone,” he told NJ Jewish News in an interview in his West Orange home. “It couldn’t have been anticipated. It was inconceivable.”
Professor emeritus of history at Seton Hall University in South Orange, Shapiro has written several books and articles on Jews and American culture in the 20th century, but this is his first on a specific event and it is a lesson on how historians ply their craft as well as a fascinating study of subjectivity.
“One thing I noticed — in retrospect it should not have surprised me — is how people framed the riot in terms of certain intellectual constructs” based upon their own experience and history, Shapiro said. Then New York Mayor David Dinkins, who prided himself on his sensitivity to Jewish concerns, used the words “lynching” and “bias crime” to describe the murder of Rosenbaum, terms from his own historical past. Jews, particularly the Lubavitchers of Crown Heights, Shapiro’s book points out, used words like “pogrom” to describe what they suffered, ignoring the fact that a pogrom, by definition, is a government-sponsored action and that the impetus for this riot began on the street. Blacks, with a similar determination to make language do their bidding, argued that terms like “bias crime” and “lynching” should be reserved for crimes against blacks, not used to describe the Crown Heights tragedy.
The existence of “different narratives interpreted differently” made his job more difficult, Shapiro said, along with the absence of “primary unpublished material,” although he scoured the archives of organizations like the Urban League and Anti-Defamation League. The lack of primary data makes the role of historian that much harder.
To understand the riot and its aftermath, he spoke to people who lived in Crown Heights at the time. “Very dangerous,” he termed that kind of research. “People remember what they want to remember. A person cowering in his house won’t have any insight into the political and social factors at work.”
Those factors are central to Shapiro’s book. He picks his way through the conflicting social and political agendas of the cast of characters like a TV detective looking for evidence in the rubble of accusations. First to be blamed were the police who were slow to respond, according to the Lubavitch community. “In hindsight,” Shapiro said, “[the police] should have gone down immediately in massive amounts, arrested everyone in sight, cut it off” at the outset, but they were working on another principle, one they had given much thought to after the riots of the ’60s. They believed that cordoning off the major area would prevent violence from spreading. Unfortunately, Shapiro said, “the problem when you cordon off an area is that the people within are vulnerable” and help can’t reach them easily.
The Lubavitch community accused “wealthy Jews who didn’t come to their rescue. They felt abandoned, looked down upon because they were different from those in mainstream Jewish organizations,” Shapiro said, “but I don’t think that was true at all. Those organizations did what they were supposed to do — the Jewish Community Relations Council was on the scene a few hours after the Cato incident, urging the mayor to restore order and suggesting he call out the National Guard if the police could not do their job.
“Jews like to believe they are more powerful than they are — an ironic imitation of what anti-Semites say about Jews” and their connection to power — as if “all they have to do is whisper into the ears of politicians. The fact remains that Jews are not very powerful in this country. We have distorted ideas of how power works and who’s important,” he said.
In another example of the irony that underlies so much of the Crown Heights story, the Lubavitchers were themselves “partially responsible for the organizations’ not responding as rapidly as they would have liked,” Shapiro writes. They had argued since the first day of rioting that this was the work of “outside agitators” and that their relationship with their neighbors was “cordial.” If this were true, there would be no need for defense organizations to become involved, since this could only be “a temporary flare-up” caused by people who didn’t belong in Crown Heights.
“The ‘outside agitators’ explanation illustrated how popular memory can conflict with historical complexity,” Shapiro writes. “If an appreciation of the complexity of the Crown Heights riot renders additional riots less likely, then this book will have served its purpose.”
Itzik_s
None of the above makes any sense. Just a wannabe scholar dealing with events that he did not experience, and that are already over a decade in the past.
The Facts
Hey Mr. Historian: Some undispuded "facts" are missing. The main one word is car "accident" verses intentional malicious violence by mostly bused in teenagers, without one black, otherwise vocal, leader (like Calvin Buts, Jesee Jackson or Al Sherpton) telling thier people to stop!
Sharpton & Buts riled up the the blacks every week prior to the riot, by saying Jews are getting preferential treatment over blacks. If you say a lie long enough it becomes truth. (An old Natzie trick.) In fact Sharpton defends his hulagans by saying there was fighting on both sides, yet once again only blacks were ultimitly arrested by the hundreds.
By not stopping this riot it led to the consept of rioting all over ie in Los Angelis etc. It also gave the police a reason to go out of thier way to show non-preferential treatment to jews or other law abiding victoms. This shows rioting pays. This pity on the criminals and victomizing the innocent must stop.
listen
At times like these and with ongoing terrorism, I wonder why became the people of the book. It’s explained in Gemara that Jews weren’t always people of the book. They use to take up an entire street when they walked down it. People feared them. We use to pull trees out of the ground with one hand, while riding a horse with the other. Not to insult anyone, but if you were to compare someone in our army back then to the JDL, the IDF, Mossad, even our own Shomrim and Shemirah. You would see a difference. The difference being we let ourselves get political. We became people of the book and not of strength. We became rich and we became smarter and we became the most intelligent people in the world. And people hate us for it. We need to go back to the way we were. Defend Israel without care of what others say. Defend Crown Heights without care of what people say. Not rely on politics or police to solve our problems. You cut off the head of the snake to solve your problems. If you don’t it comes back to bite you.
CH VIGILANTY
this "historian" is just trying to make a name for himself.
in my opinion the only mistake made(BY THE MEMBERS OF OUR SHCHUNA) was not goint out there and protecting our own.
ATTN: listen
One Q
What are you smoking?
shmuelik
Sophomoric, from the Greek, meaning a wise fool. Characterized by one who is over confident in his knowledge but is actually poorly informed and lacking maturity of thought.
Can You Please Use Your Brain
The Facts:
Were you there when it happened that you know all these ”facts"? Many of your facts seem opinionated and biased as well as based on hearsay. Maybe it would do you good to think before you speak. Although, I do agree with what you wrote about law-abiding citizens being at a disadvantage.
The Facts
Can you please use Your Brain:
Yes I was there. By the way, that is the same thing Al Sharpton says "were you there." You did not have to be there to know the difference between an accedent and intentional criminal mob riots which were seen by everyone on TV. You do not have to be there to know the difrence between victoms and the criminal agresors. Its Black and White. Sorry if the facts "seem" biased.
meir rhodes
facts; the media ie. npr[national public radio] reported that the hassidic ambulance drove off allowing the cato child to bled to death.[check the radio achives].the mayor allowed the blacks to vent for a 24hr period .after the murder of rosenbaum the police could have gone undercover in the local jr. high-highschool[p.s391-tilden high]. they would have found the killers. they weren’t interested!only after nelson was acquited did the f.b.i launch an investigation.that was a year after the progrom.the murder of ms.lapine by romaine lafond and others was as a resut of the mood after the progrom. [the city was absolutly complicent.]sharpton’s involvement unfortunitly wasn’t really probed. there were witnesses to the buses being unloaded on union st. and utica full of aggitators from harlem, payed for by sharpton and lead by sonny carson.witnesses weren’t approached.only barry gray a.h. came to the front on his nightly radio talk show. without gray’s involvement i’m afraid the whole ugly episode would have been deep throated and dinkins would have been mayor for another term.the behavior of the community council ,riding on a float, in the labor day parade to promote peace was a shame. reuvan brenenson and others going to ask forgivness[sic] from the cato family at the behest of the chcc will always remain in my mind as the height of jewish self hatred.the real book about the progom of 91 hasn’t been written.
mad!
wow ok so this whole page is a farce i dont even know what that word means but it sounds right. and plus am i the only one thats zoning in on what the blacks said: how the term ‘biased crimes’ should be reserved only for the blacks???? the self pitying morons!!!! grow!!! jews have been faced by pogroms and more and we have moved on. they were put into slavery- ha! a joke compared to what weve been through and they are haveing such issues getting over what they think is other peoples prejeduces and u know what? that just makes other pepole want to be prejudiced agains them!!!