Drawing parallels between past and present antisemitism, the documentary “Get the Jew: The Crown Heights Riot Revisited” explores the 1991 Crown Heights riot in New York City. Widely considered the worst antisemitic riot in American history, the violence that erupted in the Brooklyn neighborhood that is home to both the Chabad movement and a large West Indian population serves as a stark warning in this 23-minute film released on the anniversary of the Oct. 7 terror attack.

“The patterns of antisemitism and leadership failures that ignited the Crown Heights riot haven’t gone away — they’re still with us today,” warns filmmaker Michael Pack, the film’s director. “It’s a sensitive story, and maybe one that many people don’t want to have told.”

Part of the Wall Street Journal’s Opinion Docs series, the film challenges familiar narratives and exposes how these same forces continue to fester — on college campuses, in public protests, and in the reluctance of political leaders to confront them head-on. 

Timely parallels? 

The Crown Heights riot began with a tragic accident: a car in the  motorcade of Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, struck and killed a Guyanese child, Gavin Cato. Due to a misunderstanding, Black residents believed — incorrectly — that first responders, from the Hatzolah ambulance corps, had prioritized treating the Jewish occupants of the car involved over Cato. (The medics had, in fact, been instructed by police to take the Jewish patients out of the area as the officers were concerned that a riot might break out.)

The tragedy sparked three nights of violent unrest targeting the local Jewish community, during which Jewish homes, businesses and vehicles were attacked. The riots culminated in the fatal stabbing of Yankel Rosenbaum, a visiting Jewish scholar from Australia. The film concludes that Mayor David Dinkins and the NYPD failed to act decisively, instead allowing the rioters to “vent” their frustrations, which only fueled the chaos.

Elliot Kaufman, whose 2021 Wall Street Journal article on the riot’s 30th anniversary inspired the documentary, underscores the riot’s enduring relevance. “What happened in Crown Heights isn’t just history — it’s happening again,” Kaufman said. “The same dynamics are playing out today on college campuses and in the streets, led by groups that supported Oct. 7 and still promote Palestinian terrorism, calling for the destruction of Israel. And yet, people are reluctant to take them seriously, framing them instead as humanitarians.”

The film also closely examines how media narratives during the Crown Heights riot shaped public perception and influenced leadership responses. One of the most compelling moments centers on the experience of former New York Times reporter Ari Goldman, who covered the events firsthand. 

“I heard people shouting ‘Heil Hitler’ and ‘Hitler didn’t do the job,’” Goldman recalls in the film. “I called my editor and said, ‘We’re getting this story wrong. You’re in a newsroom, I’m in the street. I see what’s happening.’” Despite Goldman’s efforts, his reporting, the film argues, was altered to fit a familiar narrative that framed the riot as a response to systemic oppression, downplaying the antisemitic violence.

Kaufman reflects on the lingering impact of such distorted narratives. “The media portrayed the riot as an act of resistance, with the Jewish community seen as part of the problem,” he said. “They missed the fact that this was a minority group under attack.”

Professor Cheryl Greenberg, a scholar of African American history and Black-Jewish relations at Trinity College, offered a different perspective on the Crown Heights riot and underscored that, while antisemitism was a factor, the riot was also deeply rooted in broader issues of race and inequality that have historically fueled clashes between communities in America.

“People often label this as a Black-Jewish conflict, but it wasn’t that simple,” Greenberg explains. “It was an Afro-Caribbean community attacking Orthodox and Hasidic Jews. While the rioters knew they were targeting Jews, it wasn’t just about antisemitism or Black versus Jewish tensions. These were two minority communities facing shared struggles over economic and social resources within the larger community.” Black residents of Crown Heights had long perceived that the police favored Jewish residents, a resentment that had been building over many years before the riot, but which came to a head over the Lubavitcher rebbe’s motorcade and the official response to the accident.

Greenberg stressed that the riot was sparked by a tragic accident. “The violence stemmed from the perceived intentional killing of a child and the exaggerated or incorrect claim that the ambulance prioritized the Jewish victim over the Black child. This kind of misunderstanding often turns simmering tensions into explosions,” she noted.

Leadership failures

Pack draws parallels from the Crown Highest riots to recent antisemitic incidents, particularly on college campuses, where Jewish students have been harassed with little to no response from university leadership. “The same pattern repeats,” Pack said. “The media frames the events as moral equivalence, and Democratic leaders are reluctant to confront violence from within the progressive wing of their party. It’s unthinkable that they wouldn’t have acted more decisively had these protests targeted other minority groups.”

Professor Rebecca Kobrin, co-director of the institute for Israel and Jewish studies at Columbia University, pushed back on this analysis. “College campuses and neighborhoods like Crown Heights are like apples and oranges,” Kobrin said, pointing out that today’s college protests often actively reject police presence altogether, whereas in Crown Heights, the conflict was partly driven by perceptions that police had favored one group over another. 

“The Crown Heights riot was a very neighborhood-based conflict that arose because of two groups that lived in one area and felt that they weren’t being treated properly by the police,” Kobrin said.

Greenberg bristled at the comparison, disagreeing with Pack’s view that the campus protests are antisemitic in the same way that the Crown Heights riots were. Not all pro-Palestinian activists are antisemitic,” she said. “The problem is that antisemites often use the Palestinian cause to act, but that doesn’t mean every demonstration for Palestinian solidarity is inherently antisemitic. These lines can get very muddied.”

The film also addresses the failure of leadership during the riots. “The police didn’t step in for three nights,” Pack said. “It wasn’t until violence was directed at the mayor and the police chief that they acted.”

“Riots, or uprisings as the other side call them, often go unchecked for days because officials don’t know what to do. Whether police intervene early or not, they get blamed either way,” said Greenberg.

In the documentary, Pack interviewed Rev. Al Sharpton, who is widely considered to have been an instigator of the riots. At the funeral for Cato, Sharpton accused “diamond merchants” of creating “apartheid” in the neighborhood. He also led marches past Chabad headquarters. 

Sharpton, who has since acknowledged his antisemitic rhetoric before and during the riots, accused some of the violence on outside forces. “There was some antisemitic chanting going on. There was some hatred going on, and I think there were those that exploited what happened and came in that may not have even been from Crown Heights,” he said in the film.

Continuing the conversation

The documentary is the first in a planned series under the Wall Street Journal’s Opinion Docs initiative. Kaufman said that the next installment will focus on the short tenure of former U.K. Prime Minister Liz Truss. “Like the Crown Heights film, it will go beyond the headlines to uncover the real story,” Kaufman said.

As “Get the Jew” argues, the issues raised by the Crown Heights riot — antisemitism, media bias and leadership failures — are not just historical artifacts. The documentary ends by tying the events of 1991 to recent antisemitic attacks.

“This film isn’t just about looking back,” Pack said. “It’s about recognizing that these patterns are still with us. The question is, what are we going to do about it?”