A Jewish teen riding a bus in Brooklyn was threatened at knife-point by two assailants who snatched his earbuds and yarmulke while making anti-Semitic remarks Tuesday, police said.
The attempted robbery in Sheepshead Bay is at least the 11th reported anti-Semitic attack on city streets in the past week and follows a horrific stabbing attack at a synagogue in Monsey on Saturday night.
Zachary Hershkovich, 15, was on the MTA’s B3 bus on Tuesday when two strangers flashed a knife at him and removed his earbuds and yarmulke, the skullcap worn in public by Orthodox Jewish men, police said.
The attackers taunted the teen with anti-Semitic remarks while attempting to rob him on the King’s Plaza bound bus at East 17th Street and Avenue U. A police spokeswoman said the attackers gave the teen his property back before jumping off the bus in Marine Park at Flatbush Ave and Avenue U.
The NYPD’s Hate Crimes Task Force is investigating.
The attempted robbery comes less than 24 hours after video emerged of an Orthodox Jewish man being bashed with a chair by a group of assailants in Brooklyn.
Both attacks follow a slew of troubling anti-Semitic assaults across New York during the eight-day Hanukkah celebration — a machete-wielding madman’s rampage at a Rockland County synagogue the most devastating.
One of the five victims of the Rockland attack suffered devastating injuries and his family have been told he may never wake up.
Two gun-wielding attackers also “targeted” a Jewish grocery store in Jersey City earlier this month in a deadly, hours-long shootout that left six dead.