A woman was arrested on Saturday following an incident in the Diamond District, where she stabbed a rabbi with a syringe. It was revealed that she had attacked another Jewish man earlier that same day.
Anna Mochalova, 32, faces multiple charges, including assault as a hate crime. The rabbi, 26-year-old Yosef, was stabbed in the back around 6 p.m. near West 47th Street and Fifth Avenue.
Just two hours before this incident, Mochalova allegedly bumped into a 37-year-old Jewish man on West 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue. When confronted by the man, she seemed to speak in Russian before using a sharp object to stab him in the arm, according to police reports.
The NYPD’s Hate Crimes Task Force is investigating both events as antisemitic attacks.
Surveillance footage shared on social media shows Mochalova stalking Yosef, who was dressed in traditional Orthodox clothing, as he attempted to evade her shortly before she attacked. Yosef expressed that he believes he was targeted due to his visible Jewish identity.
“I never met that person before,” he stated. “She passes by other people. I’m visibly Jewish.” On the day of the attack, he was in the Diamond District, where he often engages in Jewish outreach.
Despite having traveled extensively around the country, Yosef mentioned that this was his first personal encounter with antisemitism. “I never experienced antisemitism anywhere in America on a personal level,” he said.
Unfazed by the assault, he returned to the area the next day to continue his outreach, helping Jewish individuals put on tefillin, which are small black leather boxes containing Torah verses.
Yosef draws inspiration from his grandparents who survived the Holocaust. “They went on to build a Jewish home after the Holocaust,” he noted. “If they could survive, I must go back to spread the light.”
The recent assaults come amid a larger trend, with the NYPD reporting a near 13% increase in hate crimes over the first nine months of the year compared to the previous year, with incidents targeting Jewish individuals making up more than half of the total.
Mochalova, a resident of Brooklyn, has been charged with assault, assault as a hate crime, menacing, aggravated harassment, and criminal possession of a weapon. She was awaiting arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court on Sunday.
