The diverse Jersey City community came together in shared grief and resolve as the killers in the Dec. 10 rampage at a kosher grocery store were identified as members of an anti-Semitic group, who specifically targeted the grocery and the Jewish people they would find inside.
The two attackers, a man and a woman, who stormed the JC Kosher Supermarket in Jersey City—killing three people, including two members of the local Jewish community, and a police officer—were said to be affiliated with the “Black Hebrew Israelites,” and one had previously posted anti-Semitic and anti-police writings online.
Security footage shows the killers bypassing other people as they made their way to the kosher store and opened fire. An eyewitness who was in the store told Chabad.org of a hailstorm of bullets shattering the glass windows before the attackers entered. A note with religious writings was found in the U-Haul the killers drove to the scene. Investigators also found a live pipe bomb inside the vehicle.
Tuesday’s attack, which took the lives of Leah Minda Ferencz, 33, who owned the store with her husband, Moshe Dovid Ferencz; Moshe Deutsch, 24; Douglas Rodríguez, a native of Ecuador and a store employee; and Det. Joseph Seals, a married father of five and 15-year police veteran, has shaken the residents of Jersey City. Moshe Deutsch would visit the grocery whenever he was in the area. Leah Minda Ferencz was his mother’s first cousin.
Rabbi Moshe Schapiro, who directs Chabad of Hoboken and Jersey City with his wife, Shaindel, was at the Jersey City Medical Center visiting Chaim Deutsch, who was injured in the attack, and consoling community members gathered there. Deutsch had witnessed the murder of his cousin, Moshe Deutsch, and was struck multiple times before slipping out the back door of the store. Together, they reflected on the resilience of Jewish faith in the face of even the worst adversity and belief in the world’s Creator.
Schapiro, who moved to Hoboken a week after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in 2001, told Chabad.org: “If we are to uproot this scourge of evil and transform our world into a place of goodness and kindness, then we must nurture in our society an appreciation, from the youngest age, that we are each personally accountable for our moral conduct to our all-knowing and benevolent Creator, who also created every one of our fellow human beings in His image.”
A Small but Growing Community
In recent years, approximately 100 Chassidic families, priced out of Williamsburg and other Brooklyn neighborhoods, have settled in Jersey City. The JC Kosher Supermarket at 223 Martin Luther King Drive, with a small, yet visible synagogue next door and a Chassidic school with some 40 children above, have served as a hub and the heart of the small but growing community. In addition to the growing Chassidic community, Jersey City has also seen an influx of young Jews of all backgrounds drawn by the easy commute to work in New York and New Jersey’s commercial and business centers.
Schapiro notes that “the direct targeting of visibly Jewish people,” has set a community that notes itself with warm relations with their neighbors “on edge.”
According to Schapiro, the burgeoning community has added to the vibrant tapestry of Jewish life in the area. “I regularly attend weekday prayer services at the synagogue, and often stop at the JC Kosher Supermarket for a quick bite and a warm conversation with the staff.”
A fund has been established in memory of the victims to “support, uplift and comfort,” the victims and their families.
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