Recalling a recent day he passed by the stand, he said, “There was a big line for free food and everybody was being handed this provocative material.”
Mordechai Lightstone
The flyers accuse Chasidic Jews of exploiting Black tenants and fueling gentrification, echoing tensions that have been present in the area for decades.
“[What] they’re really doing is taking people that are struggling with poverty…and they’re giving them food while doing a sick form of manipulation by trying to use that food…to create and to plant in them antisemitic ideas and to create racial tension in a community that has come so far over the last 30 years,” Behrman said.
Another community member, Rabbi Mordechai Lighstone, added: “Obviously people are very disturbed by all of this. We all have strong relationships with our non-Jewish neighbors. This aggressive anarchic element appears to be a group of gentrifiers, outsiders with a warped world view and weak connections to the long-term residents of the neighborhood, who seem determined to push an antisemitic agenda.”
The disturbing rhetoric stretches from in-person to social media. A quick look at their account shows them openly encouraging violence towards the Jewish community, with one post stating:
“Waiting for the sleeping giant that is Caribbean Brooklyn, who have long suffered abuse and oppression at the hands of the racist Zionist Chabad-Lubavitch to rise up against them.
Black people in Brooklyn are violently exploited via rents to then feed their genocidal land grabs in Palestine.
What would happen Caribbean Brooklyn brought that vybz kartel barclays energy with ferocity and tore down these F*** monsters!?”
They also appeared to celebrate the killing of two Jews following the May attack in Washington, DC, in which Israeli embassy staff members Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim were murdered by pro-Palestinian activist Elias Rodriguez.
A screenshot from the Crown Heights Bites Back Instagram account showed them reposting on their story two posts from X, one reading, “What Elias Rodriguez did is the highest expression of anti-Zionism” and another stating, “We need more Elias Rodriguez in this world.”
(Mordechai Lightstone)
“When you’re telling people ‘Zionism and Chasidic sects are targeting us,’ and then you’re promoting and celebrating the murder of Jews… somebody is gonna get hurt, or God forbid, killed,” the Rabbi said.
For Behrman, these messages tap into a long history of antisemitic scapegoating in landlord-tenant disputes, present in race relations across the city.
“Much of the antisemitism in New York from minority communities comes from rhetoric directed at landlords,” he explained.
“If parents are talking about ‘this terrible Chasidic Jewish landlord,’… it’s normal the kids are going to have a problem with Jews if that’s what they’re hearing growing up.”
In Crown Heights, the dangers are not theoretical. The neighborhood still bears the scars from the August 1991 riots, which erupted after a tragic car accident involving a Jewish driver and two Black children, one of whom, 7-year-old Gavin Cato, was killed.
Riot police in Crown Heights (Alamy)Alamy
For three days, violence spread through the neighbourhood as mobs targeted the Jewish community, looting shops, attacking homes, and assaulting residents. Amid the unrest, Yankel Rosenbaum, an Australian Orthodox Jewish student, was stabbed and later died of his injuries.
A flipped car during the Crown Heights riots (Alamy)Alamy
Behrman describes the riots as modern-day “pogroms, ” and said his own father was almost lynched by a “brick-throwing mob.”
Now, the Rabbi says, Crown Heights Bites Back is operating only “a few blocks from where that horrible, tragic accident happened.”
To mark the anniversary of Gavin Cato’s tragic death, the group recently posted on Instagram announcing a vigil on August 19, captioned: “Join us this Tuesday, August 19th to remember and honor the life of Gavin Cato who was killed on August 19, 1991 in a hit and run by Jewish supremacists from Chabad-Lubavitch.”
The post made no mention of the violence or antisemitism that engulfed the neighborhood over the following three days, 34 years ago.
Behrman noted that Crown Heights Bites Back is not the only group of its kind. In recent years, organisations with similar ideologies have appeared across New York, staging confrontations with Jews and spreading inflammatory rhetoric.
He recounted being targeted himself by members of one such group, Within Our Lifetime, during a demonstration near the Brooklyn Museum last year.
“I was walking on Eastern Parkway near the Brooklyn Museum and there was a ‘Within Our Lifetime’ demonstration. They surrounded me and shouted, ‘We don’t want Zionists here.’ I said, ‘I’m a New Yorker, I have a right to walk where I want.’ I also witnessed them telling vendors not to sell water to Jews because they’re Zionists.”
He says he saw the same crowd chase a Jewish child on a scooter and assault a local man.
While Behrman doesn’t claim Crown Heights Bites Back is formally tied to Within Our Lifetime, he sees both as part of a troubling trend of radical groups appearing across the city and pushing the same antisemitic narrative.
Behrman says police are monitoring the group’s activities and social media, but he acknowledges that their speech, however “disgusting” or “disgraceful,” may not break the law.
“In America we have freedom of speech… you can celebrate the murder of Jews under freedom of speech.”
That, he warns, is part of the problem: violent rhetoric can circulate so freely.
Rabbi Yaakov BehrmanAlamy
Despite the group’s high-profile tactics, Behrman stresses that they do not speak for most Black residents of Crown Heights.
“Most black people and Jews in Crown Heights get along. Most people are equally disgusted by this sort of manipulation,” he said.
“I’m proud to be Jewish… My concern is that they will cause somebody to attack the Jewish community. They will incite violence.”
Lightstone echoed the sentiment, emphasizing vigilance without fear. “Obviously caution is always important, but we aren't in any way afraid to walk on our streets. I haven't changed my walking to avoid them, and stand proud as a Jew in this historic Jewish community. We remain vigilant but unbowed by the threats of groups like this,” he said.
For now, Behrman says the answer is not retreat, but resilience. “We should stand proud, we should stand tall, and not back down.”
He also questions whether this group, committed to helping those in need, would extend the same aid to members of his community: “What if a Jewish person is struggling?”
Crown Heights Bites Back was contacted for comment.
