By Ron Kampeas / JTA
A man wielding a machete walked into a rabbi’s home in Monsey, New York, and stabbed at least five people.
In a series of tweets, the Orthodox Jewish Public Affairs Council of the Hudson Valley said that five Hasidic Orthodox Jews were taken to the hospital on Saturday night, two in critical condition.
The council said the assailant was an African-American male and his face was partially masked with a scarf. It said the attack took place at 9:50 p.m.
At 9:50 this eve, a call came in about a mass stabbing at 47 Forshay Road in Monsey (Rockland County; 30 miles North of NYC). It's the house of a Hasidic Rabbi. 5 patients with stab wounds, all Hasidic, were transported to local hospitals.
— OJPAC Hudson Valley Region (@OJPACHV) December 29, 2019
A number of outlets, including the haredi Orthodox Vos Iz Neias, identified the building as the Rabbi Rottenberg Shul.
Outlets said a Hanukkah party was underway when the attack occurred. The assailant fled in a car, according to reports.
Rockland County police reported at around midnight that the New York Police Department had located a suspect and the vehicle involved in the getaway. Several news outlets said police arrested the alleged assailant.
Monsey, an upstate town of some 18,000, has a large Orthodox Jewish population.
There has been a proliferation of attacks on Orthodox Jews in the New York-New Jersey area in recent weeks, including one on a Jersey City kosher supermarket earlier this month in which three people were killed along with the two shooters, a man and a woman who earlier had killed a police officer at a nearby cemetery. The male gunman was a black nationalist.
This is a developing story.
We need the Jewish Federation to reach-out into predominantly Black communities, to assure these folks that we want to love them, and want to help them do much better. We are their friends, NOT enemies!
Are you serious??? What a politically correct statement. We don’t have to be friends with anyone and no one has to be friends with us. It’s against the law to attack people for ANY reason. It is too bad that no one at the party had a weapon and took the perp out. He was NOT mentally ill, as his family and lawyer are claiming. His apartment was full of anti-semitic literature. He knew exactly what he was doing.