A 46-year-old man was arrested and charged with a hate crime on Friday evening after he disrupted Shabbat services and struck two people at a synagogue in Manhattan, the authorities said.
The New York Police Department was first alerted to a disturbance at Central Synagogue in Midtown East around 6 p.m., a police spokesman said. As synagogue security was escorting the man out, he struck a member of the congregation and a person on the security team, and damaged property at the site, Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said on social media.
Ms. Tisch later said that Larry Montes, a Bronx man, had been arrested and charged with two counts of assault as a hate crime and one count of criminal mischief as a hate crime, among other charges.
The assailant hit a 63-year-old woman in her face with his hand, leaving a laceration on her lip, and spat at and head-butted a 65-year-old male security guard, causing pain and swelling, a police spokesman said. The assailant also knocked some candlesticks over in the synagogue, the spokesman said.
An N.Y.P.D. sergeant working at the synagogue immediately stepped in and took the man into custody, Ms. Tisch said. There were no serious injuries and no known additional threats, she said.
“This despicable act has no place in our city, and our administration will do everything in our power to keep Jewish New Yorkers safe,” Mayor Zohran Mamdani said on social media.
There is tension between Mr. Mamdani and some Jewish community leaders over the mayor’s anti-Israel stance and discussions about the city’s role in protecting local houses of worship.
In a private meeting at City Hall earlier this week, some Jewish leaders urged the mayor to soften his rhetoric out of concern for its effects on the safety of New York City’s Jewish community.
Mr. Mamdani has maintained that the city does not tolerate antisemitism and anyone perpetrating it would be held accountable.
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