He was attacked on the way to shul. He read the Torah portion anyway.
Photo by Chris Delmas/AFP via Getty Images
By Louis Keene December 12, 2023
Raphy Nissel needed the gash on his forehead stapled shut, and he needed a new shirt. But the bizarre, frightening attack he survived on the way to Young Israel of North Beverly Hills would not deny him what he had set out to do: read the Torah portion for his congregation.
Nissel says he and his wife, Rebecca, were walking to prayer services Saturday when a stranger approaching from behind swung a belt at him. The buckle struck his temple.
He says Rebecca heard the man say, “Jew, give me your earrings.”
The assailant didn’t run off with any jewelry — nor did he get very far. Beverly Hills police, whose headquarters are a stone’s throw from where the attack occurred, apprehended a suspect soon after.
The man, Jarris Jay Silagi, faces four charges, including assault with a deadly weapon and committing a hate crime.
After receiving treatment for his wound at the station and changing his clothes, Nissel continued on his way to Young Israel, an Orthodox synagogue, where he chanted the story of Joseph and his brothers.
“My wife didn’t want me to go, but I was supposed to read the Torah and I was worried no one else could do it,” Nissel said. “I didn’t want the shul to suffer because of a guy like that. So it meant a lot to me not to change my life just because someone did that to me.”
‘The bloody shirt’
Silagi, 44, has an extensive criminal record — including another attempted robbery — and had reportedly been arrested earlier that day for an unspecified misdemeanor. In a less politically charged moment, the incident might be treated like any other street crime, an unfortunate inevitability of city life.
But amid an uptick in antisemitic incidents nationwide and in the Los Angeles area during Israel’s war in Gaza — which followed an unprecedented Hamas attack that killed 1,200 Israelis — the attack has added to concerns about Jewish safety even in places that have never seemed threatened.
On the social media platform X, a post by Nissel’s son of his father’s bloody shirt went viral, accompanied by a caption calling it an “antisemitism vignette that you won’t read about in the papers.”
https://twitter.com/atnissel/status/1733884123075559766
The leader of Nissel’s synagogue, Rabbi Pini Dunner, said the congregation was rattled by the assault, which was without precedent in their community.
“Suddenly, the fact that you’re Jewish makes you a target, in addition to any other reason you might be a target,” said Rabbi Pini Dunner, the synagogue’s rabbi. “You may be a target because you have a nice watch. But you’re a Jew who’s wearing a nice watch. That’s what’s shocking, and that’s an indicator of the environment that’s escalated and exploded since Oct. 7.”
‘The big picture’
Still, Dunner said he was unsure how to proceed from the attack.
He didn’t think his community was in greater danger, necessarily, or even targeted specifically in this case.
“I think it’s more a comment on the zeitgeist, on the fact that being Jewish is suddenly a high agenda item,” he said.
He added: “But people need to know that Jews are vulnerable, and that Jews are going to fight back.”
Nissel, who emigrated from Israel some 30 years ago, has nephews and nieces in the Israeli army, and was more concerned about their well-being than his own.
And he seemed troubled, or at least bemused, by the media attention he’s gotten. He doesn’t see himself or his attacker as important in the grand scheme of things.
“The big picture is the things that are happening because the air is poisoned with all kinds of foolishness and ignorance,” he said. “You have to be vigilant, and educated.”
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