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Second Orthodox Jew struck with a rock in New York City this week

Two different attacks in the Crown Heights neighbourhood of Brooklyn have left Orthodox Jews with injuries

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A second Orthodox man has been attacked with a rock in Brooklyn, just three days after an assailant yelled “Jew” before attacking the first victim.

Rabbi Avraham Gopin was exercising in Lincoln Terrace Park in Crown Heights on Tuesday when he was attacked by a man who used a large paving stone to hit him in the face, breaking his nose and knocking out two of his teeth.

It was followed on Thursday by a rock thrown through the driver's side of a vehicle being driven by an unnamed Orthodox Jewish man as he waited at a traffic light. The rock hit in the eye and causing lacerations to the head.

Speaking to CBS in New York, Rabbi Gopin, 63, described how the attacker had swung a rock “with full force towards my head.

“He said ‘Jew, Jew’. He said something in that direction…he was looking to kill. No doubt about it”

The rabbi said the man “jumped on me and start to fight with me, trying to knock me in the face – probably, I would say, 20, 25, 30 times with his fists, and I was protecting myself.”

He described surviving as “a miracle from God”.

Police have released footage of the man believed to be behind the attack on Rabbi Gopin.

New York mayor Bill de Blasio vowed that the city will “stop at nothing to protect our communities from hate and violence.”

But in an opinion piece on the subject for the Forward, local Orthodox resident Avital Chizik-Goldschmidt accused city authorities of having done little beyond “tweets and press releases” to deal with the growing problem.

According to the New York Police Department there have been 145 antisemitic hate crime complaints in the city so far in 2019 – compared to 88 during the same period in 2018.

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