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Joseph Borgen was beaten in the streets while wearing a kippah. Now, he’s fighting in the NYC court system
(New York Jewish Week) — Before Joseph Borgen was beaten in the street nearly two years ago, on the way to a pro-Israel rally, he enjoyed playing basketball after returning home to the Upper East Side from his day job as an accountant.
In the time since Borgen, now 30, was attacked, that hasn’t been possible. The incident — in which five men shouting antisemitic slurs punched, kicked, pepper-sprayed and beat Borgen with crutches — left him needing surgery on his wrist. Only recently has he started going back to the gym.
“It’s something that is still lingering and I’d love to put it in my rearview,” Borgen, who is the eldest of five siblings, told the New York Jewish Week. “It doesn’t just only affect me. My little brother was seeing me on the news. He’s still a kid. We’re very close.”
The attack on Borgen drew national attention, and came amid a string of antisemitic assaults in the United States surrounding the May 2021 conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. Now, Borgen is caught in a conflict of a different kind, one that illustrates the long tail of hate crimes that have faded from public consciousness. He doesn’t want the beating to define him, but finds that its after-effects have festered — and that a controversy over the ensuing trial of his alleged attackers has spurred him to become a passionate, if ambivalent, advocate against antisemitism.
“There is some value and good in speaking about what happened and just getting the message out there,” Borgen said. “But it’s not something I want to harp on.”
Joey Borgen, victim of a violent antisemitic attack last yr which took place few blocks from Times Square, said “The attack on me was no isolated incident. Pittsburgh to Poway to across the river in NJ— violent, deadly antisemtism is increasing to record levels”#ShineALight pic.twitter.com/4x29t9Pzi2
— JCRC of New York (@JCRCNY) November 29, 2021
Borgen was walking to a pro-Israel rally when he was attacked in the street in midtown Manhattan on May 20, 2021 — the same day Hamas and Israel announced a ceasefire after 11 days of conflict. A blurry video of the attack that circulated on social media showed a small crowd of men surrounding Borgen, kicking him and beating him with sticks. A photo of Borgen from later that night shows Borgen with a puffy red face, and wearing a neck brace.
“I was just wearing a kippah, listening to music, just minding my own business — and it all just erupted,” Borgen said, recalling the incident. “Before I can even really react or do anything, there’s a group of individuals surrounding me. I didn’t have the time to process what was going on.”
Borgen is still facing those who have been accused of attacking him — but that confrontation has moved to the courts. The lead perpetrator, Waseem Awawdeh, was charged with hate crime assault, along with a list of other charges. The case is still in process, and the next hearing is on April 20.
“I can’t even tell you how hard personally I’ve been fighting for this,” Borgen told the New York Jewish Week. “If there’s no accountability or consequences of what took place, what happened to me is going to happen to someone else.”
Borgen is currently worried that Awawdeh will go to prison for a small fraction of the maximum sentence he faces, which, according to Borgen’s attorney, is 15 years. That concern stems from reports in the New York Post and New York Sun that Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg offered Awawdeh a six-month plea deal.
Those reports have sparked a chorus of criticism, as well as a letter to Bragg by nearly two dozen groups lobbying against the deal. The signatories were a mix of right-wing, pro-Israel and Orthodox groups, including the Rabbinical Council of America, an association for Orthodox rabbis; the Zionist Organization of America, a right-wing organization; and Americans Against Antisemitism, a group founded by former New York State Assemblymember Dov Hikind, who represented a Brooklyn district.
“Failing to impose severe consequences here would send the dangerous and unacceptable message that Jews can be brutally attacked with impunity,” said the letter, which was sent earlier this month.
Hikind told the New York Jewish Week that he wants more Jews to vocally support Borgen. “We need to fill the courtroom,” Hikind said. “Unfortunately, we’re just not there. The community needs to come out.”
The six-month deal, however, seems like far from a sure thing. Awawdeh’s lawyer, Peter Marc Frankel, confirmed the deal to the Post in January, as did prosecutors on the case. But speaking to the New York Jewish Week on Monday, Frankel said he was unsure if the deal would come to fruition.
“I don’t know if it’s going to happen, frankly,” Frankel said. “It’s unclear at this point. I don’t know if it’s going to be a six-month deal, but I would not expect a shorter deal, certainly.”
The deal has not yet been openly discussed in court, and Borgen’s lawyer, Ross Pearlson, who is representing his client pro-bono on behalf of the Anti-Defamation League, told the New York Jewish Week that “it’s not clear” if the six-month deal will hold.
“I’m unaware of any offers being made,” Pearlson said. “I believe that a year would be more appropriate. Six months to me still seems a little light considering the mob violence and the damage that was done to [Borgen].”
Bragg’s office declined to comment on the deal. The ADL likewise did not respond to requests for comment on the case.
Shortly after the attack, in 2021, a prosecutor on the case said that Awawdeh had told one of his jailers, “If I could do it again, I would do it again,” according to the Post. But Frankel told the New York Jewish Week that “that quote was taken completely out of context” and that Awawdeh has offered to meet and apologize to Borgen. He also met with the prosecutors to explain how remorseful he felt.
“[Awawdeh’s] behavior was the result of bad impulse control and a bad reaction to a bad situation, rather than an effort to try to seek someone out who is Jewish to commit a hate crime,” Frankel said.
Pearlson added that Borgen “has been traumatized by this event.”
“He’s very emotional when I speak to him about it,” Pearlson said. “He gets agitated for each one of these court appearances. When we talk about the case, he’s passionate about it.”
There are now five defendants in the case, including Awawdeh, and the D.A.’s office is treating them differently based on their alleged respective roles in the beating.
“Justice is not one size fits all,” Pearlson said. “It doesn’t move quickly, but in this case, it’s not the D.A.’s office delaying things or dragging its heels. There’s going to be some element of justice done.”
The fact that Borgen’s case is being prosecuted at all puts it in the minority of hate crimes complaints in Manhattan. According to NYPD statistics, police precincts in the borough received 241 hate crime complaints in 2022, and made 118 arrests based on those complaints.
Bragg’s office told the New York Jewish Week that 92 hate crimes were prosecuted in Manhattan last year. His office currently has 20 open hate crime cases related to antisemitism for this year. A report last year in The City, a local publication, found that most hate crimes charges are dropped before any convictions take place.
Although Borgen remains involved in the case, and has spoken about his experience publicly, he suggested that it was still hard to think about.
“Some people have said, ‘God only put you through this because you can handle it,’” said Borgen, who is modern Orthodox and puts on tefillin daily. “But if I start to think about it in those terms, I don’t want to go there. I don’t want to let it factor into my views on God and spirituality because if I did, it might make me start to question and wonder about things. I don’t want to go down that road.”
On March 9, Borgen appeared in court, sitting in the same room as his alleged attackers. While he could not comment on the specifics of the hearing, not wanting to impact court proceedings, he said that “it sucks to be in the same room as individuals who could have killed me.”
“I don’t like going to court,” Borgen said. “I do it because when I’m there with other people, a large group of Jewish individuals, it sends a message that we’re not lying down and taking this.”
—
The post Joseph Borgen was beaten in the streets while wearing a kippah. Now, he’s fighting in the NYC court system appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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The San Diego imam defended Oct. 7. His mosque still deserves our help
Jewish leaders and institutions like the ADL correctly expressed sympathy and support after Monday’s fatal shooting at the Islamic Center of San Diego.
That really upset some people.
“Just remember the people who attend this mosque want us all to be killed,” Laura Loomer posted to X.
Loomer is an extremist, and it would be easy to dismiss her words as the fringe. But she does advise the president of the United States, and hundreds of social media posts echoed her opinion.
Many of them pointed out that 13 days after the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, Islamic Center Imam Taha Hassane gave a talk in which he told his congregation, “When people are occupied, then the resistance is justified — it becomes a human right.”
“We cannot accuse someone who is fighting for his life to be a terrorist,” he added. “The terrorist is the one who started the occupation, not the one who is defending himself.”
In the same sermon, Hassane said that American minds were poisoned by media influenced by “Zionist sources” to hate Islam, and that “the Zionist propaganda machine” bore some responsibility for the 2023 murder of an 8-year-old Muslim boy in Chicago at the hands of a mentally unstable, Islamophobic, non-Jewish man.
Some of them also noted that two months later, Hassane’s wife, Lallia Allali, was asked to resign from the community advisory board of The San Diego Union-Tribune and resigned from a teaching position at the University of San Diego after it came to light that she had posted an image on her Facebook account of a Star of David decapitating five babies, with the caption, “The devil is killing.”
All of this is bad. None of it justifies or excuses yesterday’s violence.
Too many of us, it seems, find it hard to understand that justifying acts of violence against those who disagree with you gives them ample reason to do the same to you.
‘We don’t need to agree’
“We do not need to agree on everything to stand firmly against violence,” Rabbi Jason Navarez of Congregation Beth Israel of San Diego posted to Instagram following Monday’s attack. “The Jewish community knows all too well the vulnerability that comes when sacred space is violated. That experience should not harden our hearts, but deepen our capacity to stand with others.”
The fact is that Jewish and Muslim Americans, despite our political differences, both face the threat of political violence and hate crimes.
Jewish and Muslim houses of worship are both disproportionately targeted for violence. Jewish congregations make up just 3.2% of all congregations nationwide, but account for 22% of the attacks against houses of worship, according to a 2023 A-Mark Foundation study. (I was CEO of the A-Mark Foundation at the time of this research.) Just 0.6% of religious congregations nationwide are Muslim, yet attacks against mosques and Islamic centers account for 17% of the attacks.
Inside the vehicles of the two teenagers believed to have opened fire on the Islamic Center, killing three people before taking their own lives, authorities found gasoline cans decorated with Nazi insignia and hate literature. Muslims and Jews in this country face a common menace in the kind of hate that appears to have influenced these teens — and there are far more useful ways of fighting it than, as Loomer would have it, blaming each other.
Work to do together
First and foremost: Stop justifying violence, period. Stop glorifying terror. Stop demonizing groups other than your own. Whether from the pulpit or on social media accounts, religious leaders need to set an example.
I get the anger, fear and distrust over the imam’s statements following Oct. 7 — that’s human. But the Jewish leaders that condemned the shooting and offered support were right to do so in spite of his words — that’s humanity.
Part of me hopes that the connections made because of that solidarity, following this tragedy, will create a new opening for mutual respect. Maybe, maybe not. What should certainly come out of it is an awareness that we have a common enemy, and a common struggle.
Here’s where to start:
•Help the victims. Attacks on houses of worship are now terrifyingly common. The A-Mark report counted 59 attacks between 2012 and 2022 — and things have gotten worse since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel, and the subsequent war in Gaza. Inevitably, society moves on. But even if there are no dead or wounded, the scars linger. “The aftermath is just devastating,” Rabbi Jen Lader of Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Mich. — which recently weathered a ramming attack — told NPR. Muslims and Jews can work together to offer lasting support for victims of such violence: volunteering and donating to help rebuild damaged buildings and supporting congregants in their physical and emotional healing.
• Secure our institutions. As the attack was unfolding, leaders of Jewish Federations of North America were in Washington. D.C. seeking $1 billion in security funding for houses of worship of all faiths. This is lobbying Jews and Muslims can do together, including standing together against the administration’s conditioning of security funding on cooperation with Immigration and Custom Enforcement activities.
• Advocate for stronger gun laws. This may be the most Pollyanna-ish of all suggestions, but safe storage and gun lock laws are common in many countries, all of which have far fewer mass shootings than the U.S. It’s a cause Muslim and Jewish clergy can join in on pushing for.
• Finally, hold tech companies responsible for hate. More than half of all Americans have experienced harassment on social media, according to the ADL. Meta and TikTok’s own whistleblowers have said the companies promote hate to increase profits. Their algorithm “maximizes profits at the expense of their audience’s wellbeing,” they told the BBC. A Muslim-Jewish campaign to crack down on tech platforms that profit off hate groups and set their algorithms to push conflict could help make us all safer.
The teenagers who opened fire on the Islamic Center of San Diego didn’t care what the imam said about Gaza. They saw Muslims, and they wanted them dead — the same way the Pittsburgh and Poway shooters saw Jews. Our enemies are not making the distinctions we make about each other. Maybe it’s time we stopped making them too.
The post The San Diego imam defended Oct. 7. His mosque still deserves our help appeared first on The Forward.
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An op-ed compared an NBA team to Israel as underdog success stories. Then the threats poured in.
With the reigning champion Oklahoma City Thunder fighting to return to the NBA Finals, one bold writer dug deep for an analogy: The Thunder, he wrote, is like the state of Israel — a former underdog now despised for its success.
The Oklahoman, a daily newspaper, published the opinion column on its website Monday morning, hours before the Thunder began their semifinal series against the San Antonio Spurs. The story was accompanied by an image of a basketball with the Israeli flag painted on it.
It did not survive to the game’s opening tip; by then, The Oklahoman had taken the article down without comment, amid waves of online ridicule that came from well beyond Oklahoma, from readers who saw Israel as unworthy of the comparison.
Amid the uproar, The Oklahoman distanced itself from the piece. Its executive editor, Ray Rivera, said in a statement sent to the Forward that the column had been “mistakenly published because our approval policies were not followed.”
“After further review, our team determined the content did not align with our opinion standards,” the statement continued. “We’re strengthening our review process to prevent future errors and deeply regret any distress this may have caused.”
The writer, a freelance contributor named Eitan Reshef, had intended to flatter. Reshef wrote that he was both Jewish and Oklahoman, and couldn’t shake the similarities in his rooting interests.
When Israel was attacked on Oct. 7, 2023, the Thunder were coming off of a season in which the team had finished with a losing record. But they have grown into one of the league’s titans since then — during which time Israel has been at war virtually without pause.
Some fans have criticized Thunder players for their penchant for earning free throws, regarding the tactic as unsportsmanlike.
Reshef wrote that he was proud of both Israel and his favorite team for persisting over the din of their critics.
“The Thunder are not hated because they somehow gamed the system,” Reshef wrote. “They are hated because they mastered it. Israel is not obsessively scrutinized because it failed, but due to its success despite deeply-rooted envy and darker historical motives.”
Many were quick to point out other reasons Israel is hated, but they weren’t the ones Reshef had in mind. “My tally has Chet Holmgren guilty of zero baby murders,” wrote one critic on Bluesky. Jeopardy! host Ken Jennings piled on, joking on the same social media platform that Reshef had suggested that “it’s antisemitic to not root for the OKC Thunder.”
Reshef told the Forward he had expected to get some blowback for the piece. But he was not prepared for the deluge of personal attacks he received.
Reshef shared screenshots of messages he received on social media and via email, calling him various profanities. “I hope you feel shame,” one wrote in a direct message, adding that he should be institutionalized. An X user, tagging Reshef in a public post, wrote, “Don’t let me find you.” The same user previously posted that “now we know why Hitler killed Jews.”
And in the comments of the Oklahoman’s Facebook post, Reshef saw one person he knew from his childhood. “‘I grew up with the guy who wrote it. He’s a moron,’” Reshef said the comment read. “This is someone I haven’t spoken to in 25 years, and actually, I would have thought he was my friend. But I guess he’s not.”
Reshef, who works in marketing, had never written an article for publication before. But after coming up with the idea, he wrote the column and submitted it to the Oklahoman via email. He received a reply from an editor he declined to name, which said that the newspaper planned to run it online Monday and in print next week. Reshef was not paid for the piece.
The Oklahoman did not consult or inform him about taking down the piece, he said, and had not replied to his email seeking explanation. And he was not sure whether he was disappointed that the newspaper had removed it, considering that perhaps its editors had been looking out for his safety.
This isn’t the first time anti-Israel sentiment has resounded among basketball fans.
The league’s most prominent Israeli player, Deni Avdija, was frequently the target of anti-Israel and even antisemitic hate from basketball fans online amid his own recent playoff success. And the Thunder itself is known as an Israel-friendly team: star Chet Holmgren was once mockingly nicknamed “Chetanyahu” for practicing in a gym where an Israeli flag hung.
The Thunder are once again the underdog, having lost Monday’s game in double-overtime.
Whether on the team’s record or on Israel’s, Reshef he had no regrets about what he had written.
“We can disagree with each other — we should disagree with each other,” he said. “I treasure that value. I’m willing to step up to the plate, talk to anybody, just talk to me. But to make personal attacks on me, as if you know me, or make threats. It’s frightening that that’s the world that we live in right now.”
The post An op-ed compared an NBA team to Israel as underdog success stories. Then the threats poured in. appeared first on The Forward.
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Trump national Shabbat divides America’s Jews ahead of National Mall prayer rally
(JTA) — As part of a 250th anniversary celebration of the United States, President Donald Trump is calling on Americans to pray together in a nine-hour marathon on the National Mall Sunday featuring a host of Christian speakers — and one rabbi.
But first, Trump is calling on Jews to mark Shabbat, the Jewish day of rest from sundown Friday to nightfall Saturday, and encouraging other Americans to consider embracing the ritual as well.
“In special honor of 250 glorious years of American independence and on the weekend of Rededicate 250 — a national jubilee of prayer, praise, and thanksgiving — Jewish Americans are encouraged to observe a national Sabbath,” Trump said in his Jewish American Heritage Month proclamation on May 4.
“From sundown on May 15 to nightfall on May 16, friends, families, and communities of all backgrounds may come together in gratitude for our great Nation,” he continued. “This day will recognize the sacred Jewish tradition of setting aside time for rest, reflection, and gratitude to the Almighty.”
The call marked the first time that an American president has formally urged the celebration of Shabbat. Trump’s daughter Ivanka, who converted to Judaism before marrying Jared Kushner, now a prominent Trump advisor, reportedly observes Shabbat according to traditional interpretations of Jewish law.
Trump’s call echoes the legacy of conservative Christian activist Charlie Kirk, who was fatally shot in September. Kirk’s book detailing his own observance of a “Jewish Sabbath” every week was published posthumously.
The exhortation has received mixed reviews from the American Jewish community. Some Jews have said they appreciate the gesture and recognition of a central tradition to Judaism, and even are promoting their own Shabbat services as part of “Shabbat 250.”
Others say Trump is appropriating Judaism to promote conservative political goals and Christian nationalism, a movement backed by a portion of Trump’s base that scholars say could push the country in a direction that is less hospitable to Jews.
Support for the initiative has been strongest among Orthodox Jews, who tend to be more politically conservative. Rabbi Josh Joseph, executive vice president of the Orthodox Union, endorsed Trump’s call soon after it was made.
“This weekend, following President Trump’s encouragement, we will mark Shabbat 250,” he said in a statement earlier this week. “We will pause to acknowledge all the blessings that the Almighty has provided American Jews through the unique devotion to liberty embedded in this nation.”
Some Orthodox synagogues, including many affiliated with the Chabad Hasidic movement, have announced “Shabbat 250” programming, such as dinners and special speakers. The group Young Jewish Conservatives, meanwhile, doled out $180 grants to conservative Jews under 35 who committed to hosting at least five people for a Shabbat dinner in their homes.
More than 7,500 people have declared on a new website, Shabbat250.org, their intention to observe Shabbat. Some Orthodox commentators tied Trump’s proclamation to the week’s Torah portion, which describes how the Israelites, having been freed from Egypt, took a census of themselves in the desert as their new nation came into focus.
“Today we celebrate the numbers, the 250th anniversary, but like a census, this milestone must also be a springboard from which to consider where America is going,” wrote Jonathan Feldstein, president of the Genesis 123 Foundation, a nonprofit that aims to build ties between Jews and Christians, on his Substack.
On the other side, Rabbi Jonah Pesner of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism is among the faith leaders scheduled to participate in a virtual event Friday morning that organizers say will “explain why so many religious Americans of diverse faiths are alarmed and alienated by attempts to use America’s 250th birthday as an opportunity to frame the US as a ‘Christian nation’ and to misrepresent the approach to religious tolerance and freedom adopted by our founders and Constitution.”
The perspective is shared widely on the Jewish left, where many leaders say it is inappropriate and harmful for Trump to involve himself in Shabbat.
“When the state meddles in our sacred affairs, blurring the already fuzzy lines between church and state, it doesn’t elevate the Sabbath; it diminishes the democracy that 250 years of history were supposed to protect,” Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie of the progressive Lab/Shul wrote in a blog post Wednesday. “I suggest we each adapt this ‘National Shabbat’ in our own unique way – not because a leader commanded it, but because our humanity demands it.”
The debate comes ahead of the prayer rally planned for the National Mall on Sunday. The event, called Rededicate 250, is organized by a nonprofit called Freedom 250, which is advertising an event lineup featuring Christian music as well as “Freedom Trucks” that provide educational material provided by the conservative advocacy group PragerU and the Christian classical school Hillsdale College.
Organizers are also promoting performances by U.S. military bands as well as participation from several Trump administration officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Trump himself is set to appear by video, and House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, will also take the stage.
Of the 33 prayer leaders set to appear, about half are of evangelical or non-denominational evangelical Christian practice. Baptist, Catholic and Seventh Day Adventist speakers will also speak.
The only non-Christian speaker on the lineup is Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, an Orthodox rabbi and senior scholar at the Tikvah Fund, a politically conservative Jewish think tank, who also sits on the Religious Liberty Commission that Trump created last year.
Rachel Laser, the Jewish CEO of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, denounced the rally as part of a rising tide of Christian nationalism.
“If President Trump and his allies truly cared about America’s legacy of religious freedom, they would be celebrating church-state separation as the unique American invention that has allowed religious diversity to flourish in our country,” she said in a statement. “Instead, they continue to threaten this foundational principle by advancing a Christian Nationalist crusade to impose one narrow version of Christianity on all Americans.”
The rally comes as Americans are growing more appreciative of religion, even if they do not necessarily practice any themselves. A new Pew Research Center report out this week shows that an increasing minority of American adults say religion is “gaining influence in American life” and more than half of Americans say religion plays a positive role in society.
The proportion of Americans who believe Christianity should be declared the official religion of the United States has grown slightly in recent years and now stands at 17%, according to the survey. A much larger proportion of Americans, 43%, said they believe Christianity should not be an official religion but that the government should promote Christian moral values.
The White House will host a reception to mark the start of Shabbat 250 late Friday afternoon.
The attention to Shabbat jolted by Trump’s proclamation has spurred a wave of non-political attention to Shabbat, too. The writer Daniella Greenbaum Davis, for example, explained rabbinic teachings in a column in the Washington Post urging non-Jews to consider adopting Shabbat as a mindfulness practice.
“Shabbat is a Jewish tradition,” Davis wrote. “But the case for a weekly day of rest, taking a formal break from worldly concerns, is universal.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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