Photo Credit: Newsday / John Paraskevas via Palladium Pictures
A Hasidic man lies bleeding after being attacked by rabid antisemites enraged by the death of a 7-year-old black child who was accidentally hit by a car driven by a Hasidic man in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn on August 19, 1991.

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) Opinion section has collaborated with Palladium Pictures to launch a new series of short documentary films, starting with the release of “Get the Jew”: The Crown Heights Riot Revisited, which sheds light on the worst antisemitic riot in American history, which occurred in New York City in 1991.

TRIGGER WARNING: Some may find these images and interviews upsetting.

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Palladium Pictures President and CEO Michael Pack, who has produced numerous award-winning documentaries, including 15 nationally broadcast on PBS teamed with Wall Street Journal Letters Editor Elliot Kaufman to bring this story to light.

On August 19, 1991, screaming rioters set upon the local Chabad-Lubavitch Jewish community in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn following a car crash in which a Hasidic Jewish driver’s car was struck by a bus at the intersection of Utica and President Streets, causing him to accidentally hit and killed a black child, seven-year-old Gavin Cato.

Jews were terrorized and attacked in the streets, along with Jewish stores, homes and cars. One Hasidic man was stabbed to death. An Italian Gentile man was yanked out of his vehicle and set upon by rioters who believed he was Jewish.

Mayor David Dinkins and Police Commissioner Lee Brown allowed the riot to rage for three full nights, egged on by racial provocateurs, while many in the media played down or excused the antisemitism at the heart of the violence.

Featured interviews in the documentary include conversations with WSJ Opinion writer Elliot Kaufman; Chabad-Lubavitch leader Rabbi Shea Hecht, Chairman of the Board at the National Committee for Furtherance of Jewish Education (NCFJE); former New York Times reporter Ari Goldman; former NYPD Police Chief Ray Kelly; and Rev. Al Sharpton.

Palladium Pictures President and CEO Michael Pack and Wall Street Journal Letters Editor Elliot Kaufman

For the record, it is the belief of this writer, who was present for the entire three-day horror and participated as a member of the Crown Heights Coalition subsequently convened by then-Borough President Howard Golden to address the hate following the riots, that this pogrom was never accurately covered by mainstream media. Moreover, the coverage, performances and other events that subsequently marked this nightmare scrupulously avoided dealing with those inaccuracies and in fact sometimes exacerbated them.

This documentary is deeply relevant as the world reflects on the one-year anniversary of the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust — the October 7, 2023 slaughter of 1,200 people in southern Israel and abduction of 251 hostages by Hamas-led terrorists from Gaza — and the tsunami of vicious global antisemitic hate that has since followed.


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Hana Levi Julian is a Middle East news analyst with a degree in Mass Communication and Journalism from Southern Connecticut State University. A past columnist with The Jewish Press and senior editor at Arutz 7, Ms. Julian has written for Babble.com, Chabad.org and other media outlets, in addition to her years working in broadcast journalism.