A Brooklyn boy was spit on by a passing bicyclist in a suspected anti-Jewish hate crime — outraging his activist grandmother, who still mourns the son she lost in a 1994 anti-Semitic terror attack on the Brooklyn Bridge.
The 13-year-old victim went home and told his mother after he was spit on near Eastern Parkway and Albany Ave. in Crown Heights about 5:50 p.m. Wednesday.
His mother called her mother, Devorah Halberstam, who was thrust into a life of activism after her son was shot to death while riding in a van full of fellow yeshiva students three decades ago.
The NYPD was notified about the spitting incident and Hate Crime Task Force investigators are looking for the suspect, described as a light-skinned Black man in his 30s.
Clad in a rainbow-colored jacket, he sped by on his bike and didn’t say a word as he spit at the teen, police and Halberstam said. The suspect never slowed down as he whizzed past. The spit landed on the victim’s black hat, part of his traditional Hasidic garb.
Ari Halberstam
Halberstam, who sits on a civilian panel that helps the NYPD review hate crimes, said that while her grandson was shocked he suspected right away he was targeted because he’s a Hasidic Jew.
“He’s a smart kid,” Halberstam told the Daily News. “He knew. The kids all around here all know. They’re aware of the world we’re living in today. It’s a shock when it happens to you — but not a shock in the context of what is happening around us.”
Halberstam’s son Ari, 16, was killed on March 1, 1994, when a gunman fired from his car at a van filled with yeshiva students getting on the Brooklyn Bridge to head back to Brooklyn after visiting Rabbi Menachem Schneerson, the spiritual leader of the Lubavitch sect at a Manhattan hospital.
The shooter struck four students, killing Ari.
The gunman, Rasheed Baz, a livery cab driver from Lebanon, was upset about the massacre of Muslim worshipers days earlier in Hebron, Israel.
His lawyer argued Baz was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and thought the students in the van were going to attack him,
But Baz was convicted of murder in 1995 and sentenced to 141 years in prison. Two men who helped Baz hide the car he fired from were sentenced to probation after pleading guilty.
Devorah Halberstam said not a day goes by without her and her family talking about Ari. Her grandson, she said, knows full well what happened to the teen who would have been his uncle had he lived.
“We live with it all the time,” she said of anti-Semitism. “It’s our universe. I don’t want to say nothing’s changed but sadly and honestly anti-Semitism has not gone away. It means the fight continues.”
Hate crimes in the city are down 20% this year, with 461 incidents so far, down from 579 by this time last year, according to NYPD statistics.
But anti-Semitic crimes, while down 11%, are the city’s most common hate crime, with 263 incidents so far this year, down from 297 by this point last year.
Crimes motivated by the victim’s sexual orientation are next on the list, with 48 incidents so far this year.
