Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Why this Chabad rabbi wants to thank the antisemites on his lawn

A hate group shouted epithets at people leaving Chabad of South Orlando

The second time the antisemitic protesters showed up at the entrance of the Chabad of South Orlando, they brought a prop. So, in addition to flashing Hitler salutes and waving hateful signs, according to Rabbi Yosef Konikov, “they were able to say,  ‘Look, how many Jews can we fit into this barbecue grill?’”

Video posted on social media shows Jon Minadeo, who founded an antisemitic group called the Goyim Defense League, bellowing slurs and insults at Jewish people leaving the Chabad campus last Friday.

Konikov, director of the Chabad center, said a similar group of protesters had assembled outside the campus about a year ago, and had also targeted the Orlando Jewish Community Center around the same time. 

Minadeo moved his group to Florida from northern California in December. The group has over the past several years littered a variety of neighborhoods across the U.S. with antisemitic propaganda flyers. 

A man charged with shooting two Jewish men as they left morning services in an Orthodox area of Los Angeles on consecutive days last week attached a photo of a Goyim Defense League flyer in an email to classmates about two months before the attack.

Rabbi Konikov derided the group as “meshugaim defense league,” using a Yiddish word for “crazy.” He expressed frustration that police officers parked a few hundred feet away did not leave their cars even as the group blocked the driveway, in deference to the protesters’ rights to free speech. 

“There’s got to be a way to not allow people to harass people like that,” he said, adding, “We have kids here, and they go up to the kids and they try to scare the kids. It’s very scary for people, and a lot of people are traumatized.”

At the same time, the rabbi said he was moved by the response of people, including non-Jews, who called to express their disgust at the rally and their support for Chabad.

“What they’re accomplishing is actually the opposite of what they think they’re accomplishing,” Konikov said of the group. “It only strengthens us, strengthens the Jewish resolve, and the Jewish people around the world get more support from the goyim. So if they’re listening: Thanks.” 

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.