A 32-year-old woman has been arrested and charged with hate crimes after police say she stabbed a rabbi with a syringe in Manhattan’s Diamond District, hours after attacking another Jewish man blocks away.
Anna Mochalova, of Brooklyn, was taken into custody Saturday and charged with assault, assault as a hate crime, menacing, aggravated harassment and criminal possession of a weapon. She was awaiting arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court Sunday.
Police say Mochalova stalked and stabbed a 26-year-old rabbi identified only as Yosef in the back with a needle near West 47th Street and Fifth Avenue around 6 p.m. last week. Video circulated by the Manhattan Shomrim shows her following Yosef, who was dressed in traditional Orthodox garb, around a parked car as he tried to move away from her before the attack.
Roughly two hours earlier, according to police, Mochalova deliberately bumped into a 37-year-old Jewish man on West 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue. When he confronted her, she spoke Russian and then stabbed him in the arm with a sharp object, police said.
The NYPD’s Hate Crimes Task Force is investigating both incidents as antisemitic attacks.
Yosef, who asked that his last name not be published, told The Post he had never met Mochalova before and believes he was singled out because he is “visibly Jewish.”
“I never met that person before. She passes by other people. I’m visibly Jewish.”
Yosef, who regularly conducts Jewish outreach in the Diamond District, said the stabbing marked the first time he had personally experienced antisemitism despite having traveled extensively around the country.
“I never experienced antisemitism anywhere in America on a personal level.”
The attack did not keep him away. He returned to the same area the next day to continue his outreach work, helping Jewish men put on tefillin, the small leather boxes containing Torah verses worn during prayer.
Yosef said he draws strength from his grandparents, who survived the Holocaust.
“They went on to build a Jewish home after the Holocaust. If they could survive, I must go back to spread the light.”
The arrests come weeks after the NYPD reported that hate crimes in the city rose nearly 13% during the first nine months of the year compared with the same period last year, with anti-Jewish incidents accounting for more than half of all reported cases.
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