(CONSERVATIVE REVIEW) – Thirty years ago, anti-Semitic mobs plundered the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn for three days, chanting Nazi slogans, destroying Jewish homes and businesses, and lynching a young Jewish seminary student.
On the night of Aug. 19, 1991, a 22-year-old Orthodox Jewish man named Yosef Lifsh lost control of his car and skidded onto the sidewalk, killing a seven-year-old black boy named Gavin Cato and injuring his seven-year-old cousin. Rumors quickly spread that Lifsh had been intoxicated and that a private Jewish community ambulance service had treated Lifsh while refusing to treat the injured children—claims that were later determined to be false.
The neighborhood, which was majority black with a growing Orthodox Jewish minority, erupted in violence. Within hours of the boy’s death, 250 rioters descended on a Jewish religious school and set its van on fire. Mobs marched through the streets shouting "death to the Jews," smashing car windows, and beating Jewish pedestrians.
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