Jewish Ledger
NY Jews began to unite against antisemitism after deadly attacks. Then COVID happened.
By Ben Sales
NEW YORK (JTA) – When 25,000 Jews marched across the Brooklyn Bridge on Jan. 5, Evan Bernstein felt something he hadn’t experienced in weeks: optimism.
Not even a month earlier, he had prayed with the small Orthodox community in Jersey City, New Jersey, next to the spot where shooters had just killed three people at a kosher supermarket after gunning down a police officer.
Eighteen days later, when a man with a machete entered a rabbi’s home in Monsey, New York, and stabbed five people, Bernstein – then the New York-New Jersey regional director of the Anti-Defamation League – drove up immediately. After staying up half the night checking in on the community and talking to law enforcement and reporters, he slept in his car. Before and after the attacks, he’d been making trips to Brooklyn to respond to a string of antisemitic assa
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Emergency responders work at a kosher supermarket, the site of a shooting in Jersey City, New Jersey, December 11, 2019. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
NEW YORK (JTA) When 25,000 Jews marched across the Brooklyn Bridge on January 5, 2020, Evan Bernstein felt something he hadn’t experienced in weeks: optimism.
Not even a month earlier, he had prayed with the small Orthodox community in Jersey City, New Jersey, next to the spot where shooters had just killed three people at a kosher supermarket after gunning down a police officer.
Eighteen days later, when a man with a machete entered a rabbi’s home in Monsey, New York, and stabbed five people, Bernstein then the New York-New Jersey regional director of the Anti-Defamation League drove up immediately. After staying up half the night checking in on the community and talking to law enforcement and reporters, he slept in his car. Before and after the attacks, he’d been making trips to Brooklyn to respond to a strin