It Didn’t End in 1945: Antisemitism is on the Rise
The following article contains references to physical assault and verbal abuse.
Joseph Borgen didn’t expect the day to end with him bloodied and blinded.
It was a balmy spring day, just over 70 degrees when Borgen stepped out of the subway at 57th Street and 7th Avenue. He had played a quick basketball game after work and was heading to Times Square to join some friends at a pro-Israel rally.
He was wearing a blue yarmulke and music blared through his earbuds, mixing with the cacophony of horns from rush hour traffic. So he didn’t hear his attackers coming.
Fists, feet, and a metal crutch rained down on his body. Pepper spray stung his eyes. Borgen cradled his head in his hands as half a dozen men assaulted him as they shouted antisemitic slurs.
“I honestly thought I was going to die,” Borgen said.
Borgen wearing a neck brace in the hospital after being attacked near Times Square.
The surge in anti-Semitic hate crimes in New York City in recent years has left hundreds of people like Borgen reeling from violent physical attacks. But it is also taking a psychological toll as many Jews find themselves forced to rethink the rhythms of their daily lives in a city long known as one of the nation's safe havens for Jewish communities.
Three out of the last five years have set new records for the highest number of antisemitic incidents in the United States ever recorded by the Anti-Defamation League. In 2022, the group reported 3,697 incidents across the country, a 36% increase from the year before — which was already 34% higher than record-setting 2020.
The war between Israel and Hamas has only heightened concerns. Borgen was beaten in 2021 when tensions between Israel and the Palestinians flared. He was one of 88 victims of antisemitic assaults that year, a 167% increase from 2020. He fears that anti-Semitic violence in the United States will escalate again as the war rages in Gaza.
“There's a direct correlation here because whatever happens there spills over to here, as we saw in 2021,” Borgen said. “I don’t think it was as heated then as it is now.”
Borgen is not alone. A survey conducted in 2022 by GBAO, a public opinion research and political strategy firm headquarted in Washington D.C., found that 85% of Jewish voters are very concerned about the threat of antisemitism. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told a Senate Committee on October 30th that the department has responded to an increase in threats against Jewish communities as a result. In New York City, anti-Jewish hate crimes increased by 214% in October, according to the NYPD.
“This is taking a psychological toll,” said Rabbi David Korn, describing the impact on the college students at his Jewish community center and synagogue, Chabad House Bowery. “These times have been fearful.”
New York City has shown particularly high statistics, as a large concentration of publicly identifiable Jewish people resides in the area. New York alone accounted for 15.7% of all of the documented antisemitic incidents in the United States in 2022.
Noam Gilboord, CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, says it's an unprecedented time of antisemitism. The council, in partnership with the Community Security Initiative, is improving and strengthening the physical structures of nearly 2,000 Jewish institutions across the city. Synagogues, Jewish schools and residential communities have implemented new security protocols and drastically increased protective measures — bulletproof glass, armed guards, security cameras, and community safety coalitions.
On a personal level, Gilboord worries for his children’s safety. His two young daughters are growing up in a very different time than he did, and he worries they’ll be targeted because of their Judaism.
“I want them to grow up in a world free of any sort of harassment, where they can practice their Judaism and be proud of their Judaism publicly,” said Gilboord. “I worry that they will not be able to do that. I worry that somebody will target them because of who they are.”
All across the city, Jewish people are watching the rising attacks with alarm. For five years, Liba Kievman, who lives in Manhattan, has hosted weekly Shabbat dinners as part of the Rejewvenate program, welcoming as many students and young adults as can fit in her home.
But after the Oct. 7th attack, and the wave of antisemitic attacks that followed, she and her husband hired a security guard to screen their guests before they entered her home. At the Chabad House Bowery, her father Rabbi Korn’s community center and synagogue where she works, an armed security guard also stands watch.
And these days, Kievman is more alert, using glass doors and windows as mirrors to see who is behind her. She worries for her husband and father, who are more easily publicly identified as Jewish than her, and for her children who attend school in a synagogue.
“Every time they leave home, there’s a sense of fear for me,” Kievman said about her family. “The majority of the people that I'm speaking to are really struggling too, so trying to be there for them and trying to help them grapple with these thoughts every single day is as been a big part of my new reality.”
She is not the only one who has changed day-to-day routines. After his attack, Borgen was joined by a friend on late-night walks with his dog. But an increasing hostile environment results in more than just a modified evening stroll or avoiding the subways.
It’s hard to quantify the psychological effects of antisemitism. However, Dr. Daniel Rosen, a professor in the Department of Counseling & Health Psychology at Bastyr University, introduced the first attempt to do so. The Antisemitism-Related Stress Inventory is a multifaceted measure of the frequency and impact of antisemitic experiences of American Jews.
A sample of 500 adult Jewish American participants was used to establish a scale of the stress and satisfaction of life correlated to three different categories of antisemitism: individual experiences, collective experiences, and experiences regarding personal safety. The results concluded a correspondence between antisemitism experienced across all three categories with a lower satisfaction of life. Personal and direct experiences with antisemitism were the driving factors of perceived stress.
“The impact on the psychological health of American Jews over the past two months is significant and includes symptoms of anxiety, trauma, and stress. While there are large within-group differences based on each person’s history and individual psychology, it is fair to say that this has been a tremendously difficult time for many in the American Jewish community.”
The psychological toll is exacerbated by the prevalence of antisemitism online and on social media according to Rabbi Ron Fish. The digital world has also become a vehicle for antisemitic harassment and verbal abuse.
In October 2022, Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt, Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism, said it was evident that online antisemitism can fuel violent extremism in an address to the Inter-Parliamentary Task Force to Combat Online Antisemitism.
A year later, FBI Director Christopher Wray told the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs on October 31st that the greatest terrorism threat to the U.S. is individuals and small cells of people who radicalize violence online. Wray referred to the man arrested in Houston the week prior who had been researching how to build bombs and posting online about his support for killing Jews.
In 2019, a 49-year-old New York man named Christopher Rascoll began threatening a Jewish woman who lives in his mother’s retirement community via text messages, voicemails and Facebook posts. On the first day of Hanukkah, December 23, 2019, he wrote a text message that said, “Suns about to go down. It would be a shame if your house were used to light the menorah. Or turned in a gas chamber.” Four months later, on the first day of Passover, he wrote that he would stick her in an oven.
According to David White, Associate Regional Director of Jewish Outreach at the Anti-Defamation League, social media has enabled the average person to say and do antisemitic things like never before. Celebrities with large platforms in particular play a significant role in the issue of antisemitism. As public figures, they serve as an example to their followers — whether it’s good or bad.
“Part of their influence is that people listen to them,” White said. “If Kanye West says certain things, people are going to echo it.”
In a tweet last October, the rapper tweeted that he would be going “death con 3 on Jewish people.” It was one of several antisemitic remarks West has made, including a reference to the so-called “Jewish underground media mafia” in an interview with Chris Cuomo on NewsNation and a call for people to “stop dissing the Nazis” in an interview with Alex Jones for the Infowars talk show.
The verbal harassment levied via social media sites and online forums is indicative of a real danger, according to Rabbi Fish.
Robert Bowers was a user of the social media platform Gab. In the description of his Gab account, Bowers wrote that “jews are the children of satan.” The morning before he took the lives of eleven people at the Tree of Life temple in Pittsburgh in 2018, he wrote, “HIAS likes to bring invaders in that kill our people. I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in.”
Like celebrities, politicians have played a significant role in the recent uptick, according to White. Rhetoric and things that used to be considered fringe, he said, are no longer fringe. In a polarized political scene, extremism has become more accepted. White cited Steve Scalise, who is currently running for Speaker of the House of Representatives, as an example of the harmful, right-wing rhetoric. The Louisiana congressman allegedly has ties to a former grand wizard of the Klu Klux Klan, a neo-Nazi and antisemitic conspiracy theorist.
“He calls himself David Duke without the baggage,” White said. “If someone said that 20 years ago, that would disqualify them.”
In 2022, former president Donald Trump hosted West and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes for dinner at his home. Fuentes had attended a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017 and earlier this year referred to Adolf Hitler as “really fucking cool.”
Extremism has led average people to act on their hatred which has come at the expense of Jewish institutions in particular.
On the afternoon of March 22, 2023, Antoine Blount physically assaulted two men walking down the street in Queens. Twenty minutes later, he approached the Reform Temple of Forest Hills where he bent down and scrawled a swastika into the sidewalk. He did the same outside of an apartment building about an hour later. That evening, he struck a third time, marring the sidewalk outside of the Sholom Day Care offices with a swastika as well.
“The swastika is the one symbol that has the most emotional sort of power and carries the deepest emotional impact,” said the temple’s president Seth Diamond. “Almost everybody, of any religion knows what that means and the horror that it brings up.”
It was particularly jarring for Diamond and his wife, whose parents are Holocaust survivors themselves.
In 2022, there were 589 incidents at Jewish institutions such as synagogues, Jewish community centers, and Jewish schools. The Reform Temple of Forest Hills, like many other synagogues in the city, has increased security measures in recent years. Diamond said that the state had made available funding for Jewish organizations to implement safety measures, which has afforded the temple a greater security guard presence and reinforced doors.
According to Diamond, the atmosphere around services and celebrations at the temple has changed. Most of the congregation feels assured by the police and security presence but remarks that it doesn’t feel the way service should feel.
“To have it at your synagogue, a place where you go for peace and comfort and some solace from the rest of the world, was very upsetting to people,” said Diamond. “They considered themselves safe.”
Blount was arraigned in Queens Criminal Court and charged with a total of 10 counts — assault in the third degree, harassment in the second degree, criminal mischief in the fourth degree, criminal mischief in the fourth degree as a hate crime and aggravated harassment in the first degree. He’s yet to stand trial as of December 2023, but back in Manhattan, a victim was able to face his attacker in open court.
On November 21, 2023, Borgen stood in the courtroom of Justice Felicia Menin a few yards from one of his attackers, Mahmoud Musa. Behind him were his parents and 50 or so supporters donning blue “Justice for Joey” hats.
Mousa had pled guilty to second-degree assault as a hate crime. Prosecutors had uncovered text messages indicating the attack was premeditated and the defendants had gone to Times Square that day intending to attack Jewish people.
Assistant District Attorney Jonathon Junig requested six and a half years. Judge Menin sentenced Musa to seven years due to a pending allegation that he sexually assaulted a corrections officer while at Rikers Island.
In his victim impact statement, Borgen told the court how he continues to suffer, both emotionally and physically, from the ordeal.
During the attack, Borgen attempted to protect himself by shielding his head with his arms. He sustained a concussion and several torn ligaments in his wrist. He went through physical therapy in the hopes of staving off surgery but ultimately had to undergo an operation in May. Borgen said the surgery did not work and after 7 months of recovery, he’s in pain every day.
Borgen was also diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder as a result of his assault. Commonly seen in military veterans, PTSD is a psychiatric disorder that can occur in people who have experienced or witnessed a traumatic event and can cause severe anxiety, depression, nightmares, isolation and other physical and psychological symptoms according to the National Institute of Mental Health.
Borgen regularly saw a therapist for almost a year after his assault to help him process the ordeal and recover from the trauma.
“I remember throughout therapy, having to go back to that scene. I didn't want to go back there,” Borgen said. “It gave me goosebumps. It would scare me to have to go back there.”
Another common symptom seen in PTSD sufferers is hypervigilance and sensitivity to loud, sudden noises according to the Mayo Clinic. He’s a proud dog owner and in the weeks following his attack, he still needed to take his companion out for a stroll. He did so with friends out of fear of being alone.
“When I'm walking my dog and I hear a loud, sudden noise, I freak out for a second,” Borgen said. “I’m stressed all the time.”
Borgen said that he’s often startled when he sees or hears people out for a run, as it reminds him of the attack. He returned to therapy earlier this year as the legal action against his assailants heated up.
In June, Waseem Awawdeh, who prosecutors say claimed in his jail cell that he would “do it again,” received an 18-month sentence after pleading guilty to second-degree attempted assault as a hate crime and criminal possession of a weapon. He had been the one to strike Borgen with a metal crutch repeatedly.
Another of the defendants, Faisal Elezzi, was originally given three years of probation in exchange for pleading guilty to third-degree assault as a hate crime. However, last month, he was handed a 60-day prison sentence on an unrelated drug charge.
After the sentence was read out, Musa’s supporters erupted in protest. The group had to be escorted from the building while those on Borgen’s side were ordered to remain in the courtroom until they were given the all-clear.
Borgen continues to worry about his safety when wearing a yarmulke in public, but it hasn’t stopped him from doing so, nor has it stopped him from speaking out on behalf of himself and his community. Kievman echoed that sentiment, stating that despite having to adjust to a new normal and take new precautions, she is seeing more members of her community embracing their Judaism rather than hiding it — more yarmulkes and more Stars of David being worn with pride.
“They're going to hate us anyway,” she said. “We might as well be proud of who we are.”
Borgen’s attack being caught on video and going viral put his experience in the public eye, but it was also a conscious effort on his part. He leaned into the media’s response, interviewing with local and national news stations and working with advocacy groups.
“From the day I got attacked, I was trying to fight back,” Borgen said. “I gotta fight back and at least get justice and get accountability. Not just for myself but, God forbid something similar happens to someone else.”
However, the “infamy” as he puts it has caused him stress. He’s frequently identified in public and was even asked for a picture while waiting for his train at Penn Station.
Two more defendants will face sentencing in December for their roles in the attack, which he will also be attending to address the court. He hopes that his case serves as a precedent for further incidents and calls attention to the violence directed at the Jewish community.
“I’m sure this happens to people and we don’t know about it and no one talks about it because all they want to do is try to forget about it,” Borgen said. “That's kind of what motivated me. I don't want that to happen to people. Let me go through it for everyone else, that's fine. I'll do it — I'll bite the bullet.”