A 26-year-old rabbi who was stalked and stabbed with a syringe on a crowded Midtown street went right back to the same block the next day to keep doing the work he was doing when he was attacked.
The man, identified only as Yosef, is a lifelong Brooklyn resident who spoke to the New York Post on condition his full name not be used. He believes he was targeted because he is, in his words, “visibly Jewish.”
“We can’t allow hate to stop who we are. We need more light in the world,” Yosef said.
The attack happened around 5:30 p.m. Wednesday on West 47th Street, in Manhattan’s Diamond District, where Yosef has spent four days a week for the past three years performing Jewish outreach — helping men fulfill the commandment to put on tefillin, the small black leather boxes containing Torah scrolls. His father has worked in the district for years.
Video of the incident shows Yosef, dressed in traditional Orthodox garb including a black hat, being followed on a busy sidewalk while people nearby did not intervene as he tried to get away from a Russian-speaking woman. According to sources, Yosef felt a sharp, needle-like prick in his lower right back as he neared a grocery store. He was taken to Bellevue Hospital with his shirt soaked in blood.
“I never met that person before,” Yosef said. “She passes by other people. I’m visibly Jewish.”
The NYPD’s Hate Crime Task Force is investigating.
Yosef was released from the hospital after roughly three hours. He said he decided on his way out that he would be back on 47th Street the next day.
“I traveled the country. I never really experienced antisemitism anywhere in America on a personal level,” he said.
“I’m going back tomorrow.”
He did. His sudden reappearance caught people off guard.
“They were in shock when I came back,” Yosef said of friends he saw on 47th Street just hours removed from the attack.
Yosef said his resolve comes from his grandparents, who survived the Holocaust.
“They went on to build a Jewish home after the Holocaust,” he said. “If they could survive, I thought I must go back to spread the light. We can’t be intimidated. We have to be strong.”
