Teen charged in anti-Semitic beating of Israeli rabbi

Victim was attacked Monday outside Brooklyn subway stop, after arriving in New York for cancer treatment

By JTA 26 March 2015, 9:10 pm Edit

Illustrative: Hasidic Jews in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. (Illustrative photo: CC BY rutlo, Flickr)

New York Police arrested a 15-year-old boy who allegedly participated in an anti-Semitic attack at a Brooklyn subway station.

The teenager, who was arrested on Tuesday night, is accused of being one of three assailants who beat an Orthodox Jewish man with his own umbrella on Monday afternoon and shouted anti-Semitic epithets, according to the New York Daily News. Police charged the teen with assault as a hate crime.

The victim, who has identified himself to the media as Rabbi Haim, is an Israeli citizen who came to New York for treatment of Hodgkins lymphoma.

“Maybe those people think the cancer I have, it’s not enough,” he told WCBS-TV.

According to the news website DNAinfo, police have said that the victim is Hasidic.

Rabbi Haim was beaten with his own umbrella after he discovered the three suspects trying to take his wallet at the Marcy Avenue station in Williamsburg, a neighborhood with a large Hasidic community. The assailants called him a “dirty bloody Jew” and a “f—ing Jew” during the attack, according to the Daily News.

A bystander who intervened in the attack also was attacked, the Daily News reported, citing the website JPUpdates.com. The attackers fled on a Manhattan-bound train.

The NYPD’s Hate Crimes Unit is investigating the incident.