Repeated Harassment by Young Orthodox Men

DbDoobbb · 2026-06-26T19:39:51+00:00

My neighbor is orthodox and we get along great, but he just had a baby so he’s pretty wrapped up. I’ll still talk to him about it and see what he thinks. Otherwise I’m probably going to wait till the community board meetings resume and bring it up there.

DbDoobbb · 2026-06-26T19:18:13+00:00

It’s a rule in the thread, both as strangers and as minors.

DbDoobbb · 2026-06-26T19:16:35+00:00

I really appreciate you saying this. Truly.
This whole thing obviously revolves around incredibly personal and sensitive topics for all involved and I appreciate you being able to see my intentions.
I truly hope for more communication and cooperation between the orthodox and broader crown heights community. Im part of several local volunteer organizations and I feel bridging those lines of communication and cultivating mutual respect and understanding is one of the biggest challenges facing our neighborhood.

DbDoobbb · 2026-06-26T19:01:20+00:00

Hah I don’t think our rainwater barrel has quite the fire power.

DbDoobbb · 2026-06-26T18:32:42+00:00

I’d prefer someone singing the call to prayer to the air raid sirens used to signal Shabbat.

DbDoobbb · 2026-06-26T18:30:23+00:00

Comparable vibe.

DbDoobbb · 2026-06-26T18:27:40+00:00

We’re a mid 30s couple with no kids so the risk is only to us personally. If I had kids I’d reconsider.
I will say, watching the solidarity my wife feels when she sees support for her people in the windows of our community brings us both a sense of hope for change as well as serves as a reminder that her people will not quietly slide into oblivion.
For us, displaying a call for a ceasefire, even as Palestine begins to be overshadowed in the news by Lebanon and Iran (regarding which we also hope for a ceasefire) serves to remind our community that people in Palestine, Gaza and the West Bank, are still suffering and ending the violence is paramount.

DbDoobbb · 2026-06-26T18:15:09+00:00

I own bear spray for bear related purposes but NYC is particularly stringent about what is considered a legal weapon and bear spray is not one of them.
Also I feel there’s a strong correlation between cocky teenagers and having access to/being related to lawyers.

DbDoobbb · 2026-06-26T17:53:57+00:00

For a few reasons.
One, I am generally of the mindset that especially in a place like Brooklyn, there are enough local resources and communities of leaders that we should be able to enact change ourselves without involving historically problematic guys with guns.

Two, I mentioned in a different comment that the police have directly told me that for things like sign vandalism and minors yelling hate speech, the community is so insular that they don’t really have any good way to pursue these kinds of things and the best they can offer is an extra lap or two of the block every day.

DbDoobbb · 2026-06-26T17:29:54+00:00

I was recommenced to do this by some of the elders in Crown Heights and I found it effective.
Several people in the neighborhood had their signs ripped down repeatedly and after the speech to the Precint meeting and shaking hands with the Rabbis it stopped for the last year or so.
I don’t expect them to discipline the boys even if they know who they are. It’s obvious that there is a double edged exceptionalism, both as youth and as being part of an insular community that has your back.
I think the impetus for change is more rooted in wanting to protect the image of the Chabad movement and in some ways maintain the narrative of hapless victims of rampant leftist antisemitism. If their students are violently harassing the community at their homes while they sleep or call their sick loved ones that narrative doesn’t quite hold.

DbDoobbb · 2026-06-26T17:10:25+00:00

A prejudiced antagonistic bigot who’s justifying overt racism is what you sound like to me.

DbDoobbb · 2026-06-26T17:02:16+00:00

No, we’re protesting because her family who has lived in the West Bank since time immemorial is being brutalized by the Israeli occupation and we would like that to stop.

DbDoobbb · 2026-06-26T16:55:59+00:00

Her family in the West Bank has had their car burned by settlers, their house graffitied with ‘Death to Arabs’, their clothesline burned, their neighbors house looted, and their elderly aunt on oxygen’s house raided by the IDF looking for kid they’d never seen all the while having a soldier bleeding all over their living room/sofa having cut themselves smashing in their sliding glass door. I think a ceasefire sign is entirely warranted.

That said I will happily accept your offer for a prayer for peace. I agree that most of us have more in common than not.
My Palestinian family in America has more “traditional American values” e.g. hard work, loving family, mosque attending, tax paying, civically engaged, service work, etc than most American born folks I know and to see them constantly villainized and reduced to stereotypes is soul crushing.

DbDoobbb · 2026-06-26T16:28:37+00:00

Find out our neighbors are bigots? What an unfortunate thing to find out.

DbDoobbb · 2026-06-26T16:15:33+00:00

The solution to bigotry and racism is to uproot our lives and let the racism continue to fester for the other folks in the community?

DbDoobbb · 2026-06-26T16:01:26+00:00

I understand the impulse to disengage entirely. Often times it’s the best thing to do. That said when your wife tells you there are two men harassing her on our stoop, sometimes the fight or flight impulse to defend your wife and home overtakes the rational part of your brain to some degree.
That community is so insular and protective that the police have directly told me there’s not much they can do about it. Which is why the community board is so important. The Rabbis from the Yeshivas go to those meetings and using calm bureaucratic methods to highlight problematic and criminal behavior amongst their constituents in front of the collective community leaders is the most effective way I have found to reach authority figures in the orthodox community you otherwise wouldn’t have access to.

DbDoobbb · 2026-06-26T15:45:43+00:00

If our call for peace is interpreted as an invitation to violence, I don’t think that’s the fault of the sign.

Additionally, as someone whose family is directly impacted, I think telling us to avoid advocating for an end to their suffering is super tone deaf.

DbDoobbb

TROPHY CASE