As Edward S. Shapiro’s comprehensive analysis of the alarming events of
1991 indicates, understanding an event often relies on recognizing that memory and culture influence perception. The facts in the Crown Heights story are that seven-year-old Gavin Cato was struck by an automobile driven by a member of the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s convoy. After Gavin’s accidental death, Yankel Rosenbaum, an Australian student whose style of dress identified him as an Orthodox Jew, happened upon a group of angry young black men a few blocks away. One or more assailants stabbed him, and he died in a nearby hospital. Three days of rioting ensued, undermining a community’s confidence and profoundly affecting a mayoral election. All else is interpretation.
Shapiro carefully dissects these events, but this book is more than mere reportage. It serves as a valuable historical and sociological document. He analyzes the demographic uniqueness of Crown Heights, the social and political status of the Jews and their African-American and Caribbean neighbors and the role played by opportunistic hangers-on. Ultimately he implicitly poses the question of whether or not a salvageable “black-Jewish progressive political entente” ever existed.
Shapiro describes the community’s efforts to heal the wounds that were opened in 1991, but when he attempts to discern hopeful signs, he finds that “the neighborhood did not fundamentally change and the Jews did not flee.” Perhaps this is an important realization: that there are good people in Crown Heights who live simple lives that are rooted in their cultures. Unlike the pundits who seek the bigger answers, they simply try to live in peace.
Noel Kriftcher was a professor and administrator at Polytechnic University, having previously served as Superintendent of New York City’s Brooklyn & Staten Island High Schools district.
