Video of a row between a black woman and a Jewish man over seats in the New York Subway went viral online after it ballooned into an argument about race.

The pair were on a busy carriage when the woman made a comment about Jews not giving up their seats to fellow passengers.

Yossi Wolfe, a software engineer for the Wall Street Journal, said he told her not to “make this a racist thing” but she insisted she had not made a racist remark because Judaism is not a race.

“An African-American lady got on with three kids, and then another African-American lady got on. I was standing, and no-one was really getting up for this lady with her three kids,” Mr Wolfe told Arutz Sheva.

“I said to her, 'can we please not make this a racist thing?'

“And then she started going on a tirade about how it's not racist. She was yelling for a good amount of time, and we were going back and forth and I said, ‘we're individual people. You can't say these things apply to all Jews’ as she was yelling.

“Eventually after a while an elderly African-American lady tapped me on the shoulder and she said to just put my headphones back in and it wasn't worth arguing with her about it.”

In a video filmed by a passenger the woman can be heard yelling: “You said I’m racist so you tell me what I’m being racist towards … because you’re Jewish and I said if a Jewish family got on here, somebody would have got up.

“That is not a racist statement. That is a factual statement.”

She can also be seen on camera screaming: “You need to learn the difference between race. "Judaism is not a race. It is a religion.”

She goes on shouting: “You guys think you’re so f***ing smart, but guess what? I’m gonna teach you a lesson on this  f***ing train today.”

Mr Wolfe can be seen trying to calm her down by explaining that they were the same, on camera he says: "I'm a person, you are a person.”

After the tirade Mr Wolfe, 31, said he learnt that the woman had had a bad day.

“She said the reason she was in such a bad mood was because her husband had just gotten arrested the day before.

“I did feel a little bad for her after that, but at the same time it doesn't excuse antisemitism, just because you're having a bad day," he said.