Attack Ends Lull in Anti-Semitic Attacks

After a relative lull in overt anti-Semitism in Dnepropetrovsk, four men attacked one of eastern Ukraine city's Chabad-Lubavitch rabbis.

Rabbi Dovber Baitman was walking home from synagogue Thursday night when he noticed the men following him. They stayed with him for about four blocks, even passing a mall where video cameras captured their images, said the rabbi.

They waited to attack until Baitman, an educator at the Shiurey Torah Jewish educational center, entered his yard.

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"They started beating me, and when I hit them back, one man fell down and one of them pulled out a knife," said Baitman, who added that the attackers shouted anti-Semitic slurs during the melee. "I screamed, and they ran away."

While pictures showed several bruises to his face, Baitman said that he's "half okay."

When the rabbi told the community about the incident the next morning after services, officials reported the incident to the local police. Investigators gave community members a direct phone number to call in case of future attacks.

Dnepropetrovsk, where the Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, of righteous memory, spent most of his childhood, has a large Jewish population. Under the direction of Chief Rabbi Shmuel Kaminetzky, the community runs a day school, yeshiva, women's college, a charity center, several synagogues, a burial society, children's choir, Holocaust museum, ritual bath and a newspaper.

Baitman had kind words for the police, who have not yet found the alleged assailants.

"The police want to help out a lot, as much as they can," he said. "They are not comfortable about what happened."

The last known anti-Semitic incident to strike Dnepropetrovsk was two years ago, when a group of men stabbed a yeshiva student during Passover.