Rabbi's beating raises tensions in Lakewood
The victim was struck with a baseball bat, witnesses said. No arrests had been made.
LAKEWOOD, N.J. - An Orthodox rabbi and schoolteacher was walking to synagogue about 8 p.m. Tuesday when a man wielding an aluminum baseball bat attacked him, sending him to the hospital with serious injuries, witnesses told police.
The beating of 53-year-old Mordechai Moskowitz, who witnesses have said was attacked by a black man, has raised tensions in Lakewood, a diverse municipality of about 70,000 in Ocean County that is home to a large Orthodox Jewish population as well as black and Hispanic communities.
"There's a very, very strong feeling of revulsion and horror that this attack happened here," said Rabbi Moshe Zev Weisberg, who belongs to the council of local Jewish leaders, called the Vaad.
Witnesses told police they had seen a 6-foot-tall, clean-shaven black man walk by Moskowitz and, without saying a word, turn on the rabbi, beating him in the head and body with the baseball bat.
Police recovered the bloody bat, but by last evening had not arrested anyone and had no motive for the beating.
"Not at this point. We're just investigating," Detective Lt. Joseph Isnardi said.
Moskowitz remained in critical condition at a local hospital, his face disfigured.
Lakewood, according to Isnardi, has seen about 20 bias crimes so far this year, about the same level as in 2006.
"We have a very large population of Orthodox Jewish residents. And we get our share of spray painting, people riding down the road yelling epithets - all kinds of different things like that," Isnardi said.
This summer an Orthodox Jewish middle school teacher was found not guilty of assaulting a black teenager, the New York Times reported for yesterday's editions. And a few weeks ago, a group of Orthodox Jews was pelted with eggs by teenagers from another town, the newspaper reported.
Some Jewish residents said yesterday that they feared the latest attack would exacerbate long-standing tensions among ethnic groups in the town.
Abraham Sasson, 15, was with a friend who quickly pulled out a flyer critical of the police department's handling of safety issues. Sasson recounted how a woman at an area store had asked him the night before to walk her out to her car only 100 or so feet from the store.
"She was very scared to walk out by herself. That's part of the reaction of the township against the horrifying attack that took place two days ago," Sasson said.
As he pushed a stroller with his son down the street, 25-year-old Alexander Spira said residents were horrified. But he also said there were places in the world that were less safe.
"People are going to Israel, where people are blowing up buses," Spira said.
