Tensions flare in Crown Heights as extremist group targets ‘Zionist white supremacists’ over 1991 incident
Crown Heights Bites Back held a vigil to commemorate the killing of a Black child that sparked antisemitic riots.
Crown Heights Bites Back members shoved a Jewish man that attempted to approach their vigil for Gavin Cato on August 19, 2025. Photo by Grace Gilson
(JTA) — Around 20 masked activists stood on a street corner Tuesday night in Crown Heights, distributing fliers accusing “zionist white supremacists” of murdering a child whose accidental death sparked antisemitic violence in the neighborhood in 1991.
Their audience featured both counter-protesters drawn from the Chabad Lubavitch movement they targeted and security officials charged with keeping the peace.
Local officials had denounced the rally planned by a group called Crown Heights Bites Back as antisemitic. The group announced itself earlier this year and has promoted mutual aid efforts and pro-Palestinian protests as well as advocacy against local Jews, including those affiliated with the Chabad Lubavitch movement that is based in the neighborhood.
The Crown Heights riots began on Aug. 19, 1991, when a vehicle following the motorcade of the Lubavitcher rabbi ran a red light and accidentally killed 7-year-old Gavin Cato. Hours after the accident, a group attacked 29-year-old Yankel Rosenbaum, killing him, and anti-Jewish riots engulfed the neighborhood for three days.
“An extremist organization is now seeking to sow division among our healing communities by hosting an anti-Semitic gathering this evening under the guise of a vigil for Gavin Cato,” City Council Member Crystal Hudson, State Sen. Zellnor Myrie, and Assemblyman Brian Cunningham, who represent Crown Heights, said in a joint statement ahead of the vigil.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams also condemned the vigil in a post on X, writing, “We must stand against this vile attempt to reopen old wounds.”
Flyers handed out at the vigil claimed that Chabad had “brutally killed” Cato and warned, “First, they will come for our children, our elders, our poor and abused brothers and sisters. They will try to kill us, exploit us, raise our rents and evict us. But we refuse to be powerless!”
The organizers declined to respond to repeated requests for comment at the vigil.
The demonstration and the racial tensions it channeled joins a longstanding effort at Black and Jewish collaboration as legacies of the 1991 riots. A group called One Crown Heights organizes an annual festival — with both kosher and non-kosher food — to bring the two communities together. This year’s festival took place on Sunday.
Crown Heights Bites Back, which also praised the shooting of two Israeli embassy staffers in May and has distributed flyers accusing Hasidic Jews of landlord abuse, framed its vigil as a call for justice, but some Jewish spectators saw it as an attempt to provoke conflict.
“They’re clearly trying to be rabble rousers. They’re covering their face — they know what they’re doing is going to cause controversy,” Yossi Rosenberg, a 45-year-old Jewish resident of Crown Heights, said in an interview at the vigil. “It’s not about Gavin Cato. It’s about anti-Jewish sentiment and trying to fan the flames.”
In an April Instagram post, Crown Heights Bites Back wrote that there is “no limit for these z!os and their thirst for blood” in response to a video showing a Hasidic man beating a Black man in a wheelchair. The assault allegedly followed a dispute over the Black man’s unleashed dogs.
The group also participated in the anti-Israel protests that engulfed Crown Heights in April following far-right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s visit to Chabad’s headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway.
Tensions flared about 20 minutes into the vigil when a Jewish counter-protester attempted to approach the group’s table but was blocked and pushed onto the street before police intervened.
Rabbi Yaacov Behrman, a Chabad PR liaison, said he was present at the vigil to show his Jewish neighbors that “we’re safe and we’re proud and we’re unafraid.”
“Who are these self-appointed people that are trying to take the memory of Gavin Cato, a child who died in a tragic car accident, and try to use that to inflame tensions and inflame the streets and to incite violence?” Behrman said after the confrontation.
The vigil ended at around 8:30 p.m., with a group of counter-protesters walking behind the group telling them to “leave with your fake Black Panther movement” and to “go back to New Jersey.”
“It’s good that they’re doing this, they want the community to know what is going on, but they also have to be careful, because they got some ignorant people that is also in the crowd,” said Michelle Spence, a 55-year-old Jamaican Crown Heights resident, at the vigil. “They will go after these Jews, you have to know what is really going on.”
