NEW YORK — For days, the charred school bus sat in front of a Jewish girls’ school in Brooklyn, its ruined hulk posing a troubling question: Has the quarter-century of peace between blacks and Jews in Crown Heights begun to fray?
Twenty-five years ago this August, the neighborhood’s black residents exploded into days of rioting after a 7-year-old boy, the son of Guyanese immigrants, was accidentally struck and killed by a car in the motorcade of the leader of the Lubavitcher sect. A rabbinical student was stabbed and died. Many people were beaten. Vehicles were flipped and burned.
Those tensions were supposed to have melted away a long time ago, but last Sunday afternoon a group of boys, all black, went aboard an unlocked bus parked in front of the Bnos Chomesh Academy, set fire to the seats and ran. Flames consumed the bus in minutes.
Five children — two 11-year-olds, a 12-year-old and two 14-year-olds — have been arrested and accused of arson and criminal mischief.
The episode prompted at least one leader in Brooklyn’s Orthodox Jewish community to formally complain to police about what he saw as a trend in anti-Semitic incidents. He says another bus was attacked and a student was beaten by a group of black teens in the days before the bus burning.
“These are not isolated events,” Barry Sugar of the Jewish Leadership Council wrote. “Attacks of this nature can either be decisively curtailed by law enforcement or defiantly intensified by delinquents.”
Many others, though, said there was no reason to believe that the bad old days were back. Community leaders say that some tensions linger, but that newer stresses have taken over, including skyrocketing rents and gentrification.
“With an 11-year-old kid, I’m not sure. Maybe it was just mischief,” said Shea Hecht, a leading Lubavitch rabbi who had been among the community leaders working to quell the 1991 riot.
Zorina Frederick, a native of Granada who has lived in Crown Heights since before the 1991 riots, said the neighborhood vibe has changed dramatically since then.
“We will still have pockets of people who feel different about another group of people,” she said. But she summed up the sentiments of many in Crown Heights by suggesting that a reckless act by one group of kids was no sign of more trouble to come.
“Kids do foolish things,” she said.
