Jewish Leaders Demanding Justice For Stabbing Of Brighton Rabbi

BOSTON — Hundreds gathered at Brighton Common on a rainy Friday morning to attend a vigil for Rabbi Shlomo Noginsky, who was stabbed 8 times outside of a Jewish Day School while children were in class.

The suspect, identified as Khaled Awad, 24, of Brighton, was arrested following the incident and charged with assault and battery by means of a dangerous weapon.

Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins was among the members of the vigil, calling for police to look into the incident as a civil rights violation.

While Rabbi Marc Baker, CEO, and President of the Combined Jewish Philanthropies called for the incident to be investigated as a hate crime.

"The attack on a rabbi in Brighton has sent a shockwave of fear and anxiety throughout the community," says a statement from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) of New England.

Rabbi Shlomo Noginski is still in the hospital but is expected to be okay.

Jewish Community Leader Jay Ruderman says he lives less than a mile from where the stabbing happened. Ruderman, who wears his kippah, a head covering Jewish men will wear to be seen to showcase their devoutness, in public, says he has been feeling fearful for a while.

"My friends will be walking down a street wearing a kippah, and have had people driving by yelling anti-Semitic slurs at them and telling them to leave," Ruderman said. He also added that his teenage son and his friends have had pennies thrown at him while playing basketball at school.

There's no doubt that there has been a resurgence in anti-Semitic incidents recently, between the Duxbury football team scandal, where members of the team were caught using anti-Semitic slurs as play names, or the defamation of the Holocaust Memorial a few years ago, to the most recent incident in Winthrop, where a man who was said to be targeting a Jewish Synagog shot and killed two people because of their race.

Massachusetts recorded the sixth-highest number of anti-Semitic incidents in the country last year, according to the ADL. More than 100 anti-Semitic incidents across five New England states were reported to the Anti-Defamation League in 2020, the Boston Herald said.

Ruderman says that living in a populated community makes him feel more visible, adding that being an Orthodox Jew makes him a minority within a minority.

"I have lived in Boston for a long time, I'm from here. I grew up in the area and never remembered a time like this," he says in reference to the recent stabbing.

It's become real.

"The polarization in power over the last half a decade has become emotionally jarring for people who have already felt that they were a minority," Rudderman said. "Is there really freedom of religion if members of the Jewish community can't feel comfortable walking down the street?" says Ruderman in response to the upcoming holiday.

Ruderman says he feels that change will not happen unless more leaders start speaking out against the hate.

Governor Charlie Baker took to Twitter, saying there is "no place for hate in Massachusetts."

Awad is set to be arraigned in Brighton District Court Friday, and Rollins said she planned on attending.