The Los Angeles rabbi allegedly threatened by the heir to California’s second largest raisin company is glad that Bruce Lion was arrested on hate crime charges but told JNS that it took too long for him to be apprehended.
“I’m so elated that this was shut down before it was too late,” Rabbi Zushe Cunin, executive director of the Chabad Jewish Community Center of Pacific Palisades in the Los Angeles area, told JNS. “I can’t say it wasn’t frustrating that it took awhile.”
Lion has “very, very little respect or regard for anybody in the community” since he moved into the neighborhood in March, according to the rabbi.
The raisin heir has blasted music in the middle of the night and refused to turn it down, and over the past few weeks, Lion’s behavior became “really intense,” Cunin told JNS.
“He started with his tremendous verbal assaults and threats at all kinds of people, and specifically people in our community and people praying at our service on the rooftop,” the rabbi said.
The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office charged Lion, 64, on Thursday with three felony hate crimes for allegedly threatening to kill Cunin. Lion was arrested on June 13.
Cunin told JNS that he wasn’t raised with fear, but Lion’s conduct caused the whole Jewish community to be “filled with trepidation and yes, tremendous anxiety and fear and trauma.”
It took a week from when footage first emerged of Lion’s alleged behavior for the heir to Lion Raisins to be arrested, according to the rabbi.
Cunin shared video footage with JNS that appeared to show Lion shouting obscenities at congregants on the rooftop of the synagogue, calling them “Jewboy” and accusing them of killing Jesus and burning down the Palisades neighborhood.
At one point, Lion appeared to shout at someone on the rooftop, “Get on your knees, or I’ll f****** kill you. I’m going to assassinate you.”
He also seemed to shout “you’re dead motherf*****.”
“It’s of course very, very, very concerning and alarming that in a small bedroom community like Pacific Palisades, which has already suffered from the traumatic fires and the aftermath, to have to deal with this type of unacceptable behavior,” the rabbi told JNS.
“I don’t even know the right word,” he said. “Both Jewish and non-Jewish friends and neighbors from the community, and people who I have never met, are so appalled.”
“It’s crazy that there is this type of anger out there against the Jewish people and against all different races,” he told JNS.
Lion Raisins reportedly stated on Wednesday that the alleged behavior is “deeply troubling” and that Lion “does not actively participate in the company’s day-to-day operations.”
The company also stated that it denounces “antisemitism, racism and all forms of hate, discrimination and intolerance.”
Cunin found the company’s statement “interesting.”
“Words are cheap,” he told JNS.
“If this man is a beneficiary on the board of this company and has wired $6 million cash from the company to buy that house, they need to stand up a little more strongly,” he said. (JNS sought comment from Lion Raisins.)
Cunin thinks that Jews cannot live in fear.
“That’s not what the Jewish people have held onto their whole life,” he told JNS. “We live with pride. We live with strength. We live with joy, gratitude and the way we get rid of darkness is with light.”
“We inspire ourselves from this pain to turn it into positive action,” he added.
