A 32-year-old Jewish man, who was attacked on Monday evening near left Adas Torah, an Orthodox synagogue in Los Angeles, told JNS that his life flashed before his eyes.
“I don’t know if he said the words, ‘I want to kill you,’ but his facial expression and his attitude definitely gave that message,” said the victim, who spoke to JNS on the condition that he not be named. “I thought it was the end of my life.”
The victim, who said he is a Judaic studies teacher and “just a regular person,” told JNS that “I never would have thought such an incident would happen to me.”
After studying at Merkaz Hatorah Community Kollel, around the corner from the synagogue, on Monday evening, he walked home through an alleyway, as he has done for the past five years, and noticed a blue minivan following slowly beside him. He said he was wearing a kippah at the time.
He made a “Hey, how are you” facial expression toward the driver, whom he described as a black man. The driver made the same expression in response, the victim told JNS.
“All of a sudden, he just opens the door,” he said. “I don’t know what he was saying. He pounced me, immediately put his hands over my neck, shaking me back and forth, trying to choke me.”
The man used “a window breaker or window chiseler, I don’t know what you call it” as “a weapon as he was choking me against my neck,” the victim told JNS.
“He pinned me to the corner, and I don’t even know how, I just see I’m rolling on the floor, and as I’m vulnerable on the floor,” the victim said. “He gives me a stare and he says, ‘free Palestine’ and he goes back to his car.”
“I just ran back to safety, try to find a friend in the kollel, go into his car and call the cops from there,” he told JNS. He added that since the attack, it has been “definitely harder to walk alone.”
“You take your regular daily walk for granted, which you think should be fine and safe,” he said. “Now it’s a little bit hard to walk to shul.”
He added that the incident shows that “this can happen to anybody.”
“People shouldn’t think that, ‘Oh this is not going to happen to me,’” the victim told JNS. “It can happen to anyone walking the streets, anyone with their groceries, anyone. Anyone going anywhere.”
The incident has made the victim more motivated to be “100 times more effective” in teaching the next Jewish generation on “what it means to be Jewish” and “how we should always be proud to be Jewish,” he told JNS.
Ron Galperin, interim Los Angeles regional director at the American Jewish Committee, told JNS that “we are outraged by the reports of an assault Monday night near Adas Torah Synagogue in the Pico-Robertson neighborhood.”
“While facts are still emerging, the details known so far are deeply concerning,” he said. “From what we’ve learned so far, this attack was not an isolated act of violence. It reflects a troubling pattern: the normalization of antisemitic behavior in our communities. No one should be targeted or attacked because they are Jewish. Period.”
The attack occurred in the district of Katy Yaroslavsky, a member of the Los Angeles City Council and a Democrat, who is Jewish.
“Last night, an individual assaulted a man leaving Adas Torah Synagogue in Pico-Robertson. According to preliminary information, the suspect approached the victim, attacked him and fled the scene while shouting antisemitic remarks,” she told JNS. “The victim received medical attention and is recovering. LAPD has informed our office that this is being investigated as a hate crime.”
“Hate incidents and hate crimes in Los Angeles have increased significantly over the past several years. When hate speech targeting Jewish communities increases and becomes normalized, violence against our community follows,” Yaroslavsky told JNS. “This pattern has existed for thousands of years, and we need to call it out directly for what it is. Antisemitism has no place in Los Angeles, and I call on my colleagues and fellow community leaders to condemn this violence, protect the freedom to worship and stand with Jewish Angelenos.”
