A Brookyn man described how he managed to survive being stabbed in the chest by a ranting stranger during an antisemitic attack outside the victim’s synagogue.
Elias Rosner, a 35-year-old Orthodox Jew, had just left his Crown Heights synagogue at Kingston Ave. and Lincoln Place about 4 p.m. Tuesday with a few fellow congregants when the attacker stormed up to the group and launched into an antisemitic tirade.
“We were just crossing the street when he started ranting at all of us,” Rosner told the Daily News. “He said if the Holocaust was successful we wouldn’t be here today and how he wanted to kill a Jew today and he couldn’t wait to do it. I looked at him like he had two heads growing out of his shoulders and he started going off (on me).”
The suspect zeroed in on Rosner because “I was the only one to look him in the eye,” the victim said.
Video of the clash shared on social media shows Rosner wearing a tan shirt and a lime green hat as he fights off the stranger, who walks off down the street.
For a few moments, Rosner follows the suspect , the video shows. During a second exchange between the two men a few moments later the attacker pulls a knife and stabs Rosner in the chest just above his heart.
“I was able to defend myself just fine,” Rosner said.
The stabber ran off and was last seen heading toward Sterling Place and Albany Ave.
The attack took place just before the third night of Chanukah and three days after father and son gunmen in Sydney, killed 15 people and wounded several others at a Chanukah event at Bondi Beach.
Medics took Rosner to Kings County Hospital, where he was treated for a minor wound.
“Luckily a combination of technique and blade shape made the blade glance off,” he said. “The push ups I do helped too.”
Following the attack, the NYPD “deployed dozens of additional officers to Crown Heights and the surrounding areas to search for the perpetrator,” a department spokesman said.
Cops recovered images of the suspect from surveillance cameras. On Wednesday they released footage of the suspect, who was sporting cornrows and a black-and-white jacket with the word “Genuine” on the back, and asked the public’s help identifying him and tracking him down.
The NYPD’s Hate Crimes Task Force is on the case and interviewed Rosner at the hospital late Tuesday. On Wednesday, Rosner was home recovering.
Cops believe the stabber may be mentally disturbed — but that doesn’t give him a free pass for his behavior, Rosner said.
“There are plenty of people with mental health problems who aren’t bigoted and aren’t violent,” he said. “That shouldn’t be an excuse.”
Police said a similar assault on a No. 3 train rumbling through Brooklyn Monday night where two Jewish men were shoved wasn’t determined to be antisemitic, but a fight over a train seat, officials said.
Rosner believes random antisemitic attacks like the one he suffered happen when more and more people call to “globalize the intifada” and denounce Israel, although he admitted that the stabber never said anything about Israel in his rant.
Last month, a pro-Palestinian group yelled “globalize the intifada” and other slogans during a protest outside the Park East Synagogue on the Upper East Side, which rattled congregants and had critics blasting the NYPD for not keeping protesters away from the house of worship’s front door.
No one was hurt or arrested but NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch visited the synagogue days later and apologized to the congregation, saying the NYPD should have set up a “frozen zone” outside the entrance.
Despite these high-profile incidents, antisemitic incidents in the city are down by 9% for the year, from 334 by this time last year to 305 so far this year.
Antisemitic incidents account to more than half of bias crime in the city investigated by the NYPD’s Hate Crimes Task Force, officials noted.
Anyone with information regarding the suspect is asked to call Crime Stoppers at (800) 577-TIPS. All calls will be kept confidential.
