Two years after the riots in Crown Heights, blacks and Hasidic Jews are still demanding justice and nurturing peace. : Rage and Atonement

Never again.

As he stands by his young son’s grave on a sweltering afternoon, Carmel Cato rises above private grief to issue a public warning. A message to the Hasidic Jews whose motorcade accidentally killed his boy, Gavin, two years ago, triggering New York’s worst race riots in two decades.

“Nobody ever paid the price for this, nobody went to jail,” says Cato, a soft-spoken black man with tears in his eyes. “And it’s because some lives are considered more important than others in Crown Heights. This must never happen again.”

At almost the same moment 10,000 miles away, Norman Rosenbaum leaves his home in Australia and boards a plane for New York to resume his bitter quest for justice. Three hours after Gavin Cato died, an angry mob of blacks surrounded Rosenbaum’s 29-year-old brother, Yankel, an Orthodox Jewish student, and stabbed him to death in the same Brooklyn neighborhood. “Kill the Jew,” they shouted as he fell.

“The fury over my brother’s death continues because a jury acquitted the only man who was charged with the crime,” says Rosenbaum. “His killers still walk the streets, free to do as they like, while the city does nothing. And so we Jews say it once more: Never again.”

In Crown Heights, justice is a bad joke and wounds have yet to heal. The deaths of Cato and Rosenbaum sparked three days of rioting in August, 1991, filling the front pages and shocking millions of New Yorkers. Now, two years after the storm broke over the neighborhood on a hot summer night, the personal, political and moral fallout continues.

At first glance, the community of brownstone apartments and brick homes less than 15 minutes from Wall Street seems calm. Caribbean blacks go about their daily business with Hasidic Jews, a reclusive, Messianic group whose men wear black hats, long black coats and beards. But underneath that lid of civility is a caldron of animosity.

Last month, a two-volume state report blasted New York City Mayor David Dinkins for failing to halt the violence as soon as it broke out. The key finding, which the city’s first black mayor does not dispute, was that he waited three days to snuff out a riot that resulted in 190 injuries, mostly to police, and 124 arrests.

Dinkins explained that he and top aides didn’t realize the riot was out of control until the third night, despite widespread television coverage of the carnage. The report was a devastating indictment, a portrait of passivity under fire that could become a key issue in the city’s Nov. 2 mayoral election.

As might be expected, attorneys for both the Cato and Rosenbaum families charged that their clients’ rights had been violated. Last week, lawyers representing Rosenbaum deposed Dinkins in a vitriolic public session, arguing that he deliberately left Jews unprotected. Meanwhile, Attorney General Janet Reno is deciding whether to re-try the Rosenbaum case on federal civil-rights grounds.

The greatest pain, however, has been felt by blacks and Jews. Like the 1992 Los Angeles riots, Crown Heights raised troubling questions about race relations. But the Brooklyn clash marked an unprecedented attack by blacks on Jews, adding a disturbing new chapter to an already tense relationship. And that, in turn, has spawned soul-searching in the Jewish community. Many non-Orthodox Jews have long felt uneasy about the Hasidim, spurning their religious fundamentalism and extreme political views. During the riots, some national Jewish organizations remained silent about the violence against their brethren, causing the rift to grow.

The Crown Heights controversy shows no signs of fading away--not for Jews, blacks or anyone else--and has cast a pall over New York City.

“There’s a sense of heaviness and pain in our community that all New Yorkers still feel,” Gov. Mario M. Cuomo said earlier this month at a ceremony commemorating the two-year anniversary of the riots. “We can’t forget what happened. Yet we have to move on.”

For some, that’s the only choice. Amid the gloom, there are a few signs of genuine progress in Crown Heights. A handful of activists has worked to bring Jews and blacks together, trying everything from face-to-face meetings and basketball games to multiracial rap concerts. They’re hopeful, telling anyone who will listen that grass-roots communication can make a huge difference, especially among the neighborhood’s youth. But they’re also realistic.

“We’re nowhere near where we want to be,” says Richard Green, a black community organizer who runs the Crown Heights Youth Collective. “There’s still a lot of negative stuff that’s playing out here. People hear all the bad news these days and tune out the rest.”

Like so many other neighborhood problems, it began with a misunderstanding.

On the night of Aug. 19, 1991, a police car was guiding two other vehicles through Crown Heights. The caravan included Menachem Schneerson, the Grand Rebbe and spiritual leader of the Lubavitchers--the formal name for the branch of Hasidic Jews who live there.

As was his custom, the Rebbe was returning from the cemetery where he visited the graves of his wife and predecessor. At 8:20 p.m., the last car in the motorcade sped through a red light to keep up with the other vehicles and was hit by another automobile.

The driver of the third car, Yosef Lifsh, careened onto a sidewalk, killing 7-year-old Gavin Cato and injuring his 6-year-old cousin, Angela Cato.

Within seconds, a Hasidic-run ambulance company arrived at the scene, where enraged onlookers had begun to beat up Lifsh.

When police arrived, they quickly urged the Lubavitchers to climb into their own private ambulance and flee the scene for their own safety. At the same moment, a city ambulance arrived and began taking care of the bleeding children.

In the confusion, a rumor spread like wildfire: The Jews took care of their own, leaving two innocent black kids to die. And the cops let it happen.

Soon, bands of angry black people began roaming the neighborhood, trashing Jewish businesses and attacking Hasidim. Minutes after Yankel Rosenbaum was stabbed, police arrested a suspect and brought him before the dying man, who lay crumpled on the hood of a car. He spat blood at the 16-year-old black suspect and cried: “Why did you do this? I never did anything to you.”

For the next 96 hours, Crown Heights went through hell. Large crowds of blacks threw rocks at police and assaulted Jews, shouting “Heil Hitler!” Rioters defaced buildings and looted stores, while black and Jewish protesters staged counter-demonstrations.

All the while, hundreds of police followed orders and stood their ground, failing to pursue rioters who were roaming at will through the 50-square-block neighborhood. On the fourth day, the disturbance was finally snuffed when Dinkins flooded the area with 2,000 officers.

It was war--fueled by the racism and ignorance that had festered in Crown Heights for years. Angry and distrustful, the neighborhood’s mostly Caribbean blacks had clashed repeatedly with Hasidim over housing, crime and other issues. There had been only sporadic attempts at dialogue, and ugly incidents kept dividing the two hostile communities.

“We’re paying now for that distance,” says Rabbi Shea Hecht, one of the leading Hasidic peacemakers and co-chair of a blue-ribbon community panel formed after the riots to reduce tensions. “We have a long road to travel. I can’t kid you about that.”

A key problem is that Crown Heights differs markedly from other urban trouble spots. It may be the only place in the United States where a white community surrounded by black neighbors has refused to move. An estimated 170,000 blacks and 17,000 Lubavitchers reside in the area, and on some blocks they live side by side, sharing the same streets and an uneasy peace.

“We don’t understand the Jewish people very well,” says T.J. Moses, a 16-year-old black resident of Crown Heights. “But we have to try better. We’ve got to forget what happened.”

That may be a pipe dream, given the crush of media coverage. Crown Heights, as every New Yorker knows, has become a near-obsession with reporters, rabble-rousers and politicians.

Since the state report, Dinkins has accepted responsibility, repeatedly saying “never again.” But that hasn’t silenced Jewish critics, nor has it quieted Rudolph Giuliani, the Republican challenger and former U.S. Attorney who leads Dinkins in the polls. Four years ago, the city’s liberal Jewish voters supported Dinkins. Now, many say they are are undecided.

“Crown Heights left a real mark on the Jewish gut,” says Jim Sleeper, a journalist and author who has written about New York City ethnic relations. “We’ve all heard stories from parents of Jewish kids getting beaten up by Irish kids years ago, but this mass attack and the ugliness of it was truly unprecedented. To a lot of Jews, it’s been a watershed.”

For many black residents, however, the events leading up to the riot merely confirm what they’d come to believe about the Lubavitchers. They’ve long regarded the insular group with suspicion, never understanding why the men recited strange prayers in public. Some felt insulted that Hasidic women refused to shake hands with neighbors. Mostly, they chafed at the group’s perceived clout at city hall--and their own corresponding political weakness.

Indeed, the police-led motorcade that killed Gavin Cato came to symbolize this image.

In 1981, after threats on the Rebbe’s life, Mayor Edward I. Koch assigned an unmarked police car to escort Schneerson’s biweekly caravans to the cemetery. Police had also been assigned to channel traffic from overflow crowds on the Jewish Sabbath. The result has been a persistent belief by many black residents that Hasidim receive more city services than blacks do.

Given these pressures, it’s not surprising that the confusion and anger over Cato’s tragic death finally lit the torch in Crown Heights. Jews were outraged that blacks would equate Cato’s accidental death with Rosenbaum’s deliberate murder, but others saw it differently.

“Gavin, we won’t let them bury you on the back pages,” said the Rev. Al Sharpton, a controversial black activist, at a ceremony marking the second anniversary of the boy’s death.

“You’re bigger than a 7-year-old now. You’re the symbol of a whole system of racism, and we’re going to make sure the whole world knows what really happened in Crown Heights.”

For years, the quiet Brooklyn neighborhood was nothing special. Like many other New York melting pots, it was home to Irish, Italian, Jewish, German and black families, all of whom lived together fairly peaceably. Everything changed after World War II.

Suddenly, white families moved out of Crown Heights in droves, lured by affordable homes in newly built suburbs. At the same time, a large number of Caribbean blacks and others streamed into the tree-lined community, attracted by its relatively cheap housing. In less than three decades, the once overwhelmingly white neighborhood became 70% black.

But the Lubavitchers stayed. They had invested a fortune in real estate and had spent years developing local businesses. Their evangelical culture required a network of services all within walking distance--including synagogues, yeshivas (schools), markets and mikvahs (ritual baths for women). How could they duplicate this world in a Long Island subdivision?

In 1969, the Grand Rebbe labeled it a sin for Hasidim to sell housing to non-Jews if it would harm the long-term interests of the Jewish community. Crown Heights was their home, he declared, and would remain so. The Lubavitchers consider the Rebbe their Messiah, his decisions their law.

Turning their backs on the modern world, Hasidim carefully observe the strict Jewish commandments that have governed the sect since its origins in czarist Russia. Under a code of modesty, women are forbidden to touch men other than their husbands. Children attend special religious schools and summer camps. Their parents are leery of outsiders, including non-Orthodox Jews.

In a New York neighborhood wracked with change, they’ve kept to themselves and taken care of their own. Years ago, the Lubavitchers formed a community patrol and started their own ambulance service. Did black neighbors complain? It really didn’t matter.

“If I want to live in a ghetto, within my religious beliefs, that’s my right in this country,” explains Rabbi Hecht. “It’s not that we’re antisocial. These are ancient laws. We believe in ‘live and let live.’ We’ve never wanted to make trouble with anybody.”

But violence flared between Hasidim and blacks. Over the years, the Lubavitchers blamed blacks for increased crime, while blacks protested that they were being roughed up by vigilante groups. By the mid-’70s, racial tensions had reached the breaking point.

“The Jews think the blacks are all muggers and rapists,” said the Rev. Clarence Norman Sr., the minister of First Baptist Church of Crown Heights, in a 1975 interview. “And the blacks see the Jews as white people, as symbols of oppression. Tension could be removed by dialogue.”

Such dialogue would not begin until rioting tore the neighborhood apart 16 years later. And even then, politicians discovered that racial healing is a tricky art.

Initial press accounts made Dinkins look like a hero in Crown Heights. The New York media credited him with cracking down on violence and he was widely praised for cooling community tensions by sending a network of mayoral advisers to neighborhood trouble spots.

Then stories surfaced about the confused police response, how scores of officers had been hurt. Critics said cops weren’t given the green light to crack down until the third day--when Dinkins himself was pelted by rocks after visiting a Crown Heights school.

Meanwhile, the criminal justice system made everyone angry. A grand jury failed to indict Lifsh, ruling Gavin Cato’s death accidental. Rosenbaum’s accused killer was acquitted, amid charges the Brooklyn district attorney had badly bungled the case.

Hasidic critics charged that Dinkins had gone easy on black rioters because he didn’t want to antagonize his political base, a charge the mayor heatedly denied. Blacks, in turn, insisted that Cato’s death had been swept under the rug.

Dinkins was taunted by Jewish demonstrators on a trip to Israel, and the Amsterdam News, the city’s leading black newspaper, editorialized that “a carful of Jews” had murdered Cato.

Adding fuel to the fire, mayoral challenger Giuliani called the riot a pogrom--a politically loaded word for the state-sponsored violence that plagued Jews under the Russian czars. Then, during a New York speech in which Dinkins urged public healing, hecklers called him a “Jew hater.”

The normally low-key mayor erupted. Blasting back at his critics, he asked: “In burying a 7-year-old boy and a quiet biblical scholar, did we bury decency, too?”

By now, even Jews were slamming each other. Commentary, the conservative Jewish magazine, noted that Lubavitchers are law-abiding folk. But writer Philip Gourevitch added acidly:

“The Hasidim of Crown Heights are no Gandhis. They tend to be openly critical of blacks, and their criticisms often smack of bigotry. Moreover, their uncompromising rejection of modern liberal society . . . makes them alien not only to their black neighbors but to just about everyone else, including the majority of their fellow Jews.”

In a stinging response to such thinking, New York Times columnist A.M. Rosenthal addressed Jews who feel economically and morally superior to Lubavitchers, and who were quiet during the riots:

“Are the Hasidim a little too Jewish for them? Maybe they think only a certain kind of Jew gets beaten up. Sweethearts, by you, you are Park Avenue, by your wife, you are Park Avenue, but by an anti-Semite, you are a Hasid.”

For Lubavitchers, it’s an old war. Conceding that his group has to mend fences, Rabbi Hecht says: “Sure, we were being attacked by blacks. But they weren’t the real bad guys. Our enemies are the Jews on Long Island who aren’t close to us. And they think we’re the bad guys.”

The political corpses are strewn all over Crown Heights. And Dinkins may be the biggest loser of all.

But is it really that simple? Supporters point out that the mayor faced tough tactical choices. Green, the veteran activist, says Dinkins’ strategy of reaching out to residents instead of instantly cracking heads averted more bloodshed.

“We let people blow off steam in community meetings,” he says. “And what’s the alternative? Were we supposed to kill 75 people and have 1,500 buildings go up in smoke? If we had, South-Central (Los Angeles) would have been a Halloween party by comparison.”

Green shakes his head, idling his van on a quiet Crown Heights street: “We don’t have to love each other, but we have to respect each other. At some point, all this yelling has to stop and the healing has to begin. Like right now.”

If there’s any healing in the neighborhood, it mostly happens out of public view.

The Crown Heights Coalition, a group of community leaders from both sides, meets regularly to find common ground. They sponsor forums, publish newsletters and plant trees for peace in a local park. The goodwill is growing, but with adults it has limits.

As she chats with neighbors at the local mikvah, for example, resident Bracha Levertov blames outside agitators for much of Crown Heights’ troubles. Still, she says, many Hasidic Jews remain distrustful of their black neighbors, despite the need to build bridges.

“I know we need to communicate,” Levertov says. “But when you see toughs walking on your side of the street, you cross to the other side. I’m sorry. Feelings are feelings.”

Several blocks away, Elisha Gill leans on a rake and concedes that both sides have had their troubles. Yet Gill, a black homeowner, says it’s nothing that can’t be solved if people listen to each other.

As if by some magical clockwork, Green pulls up in his van and quietly agrees: “This man (Gill) has the answer, he’s got it right. We can’t get angry. We gotta get busy. And that’s what me and my buddy, Dave, are all about.”

Almost on cue, David Lazerson strolls around the corner with two teen-agers, one black and one Hasidic. T.J. Moses and Yudi Simon give Green high-fives and then Lazerson gives him a bear hug. Slowly, the stereotypes fade.

“Me and T.J. got to be friends, and it’s because we’ve been talking to each other,” says Simon, a cheerful kid wearing a yarmulke and T-shirt that reads “Increase the Peace.”

T.J. grabs Simon in a playful hammerlock and nods in agreement: “It wouldn’t be possible for us, you know, without the good community stuff that Richard and David put together.”

The two men couldn’t be more different: Lazerson, a Lubavitcher with a Ph.D. in special education, wears a New York Yankees skullcap, along with sneakers, baggy jeans and a black T-shirt reading “Laz” on the back.

Green, whose long dreadlocks end in a pony tail, has run the Crown Heights Youth Collective for 16 years. Both men are in their mid-40s.

Soon after the riots ended, their respective communities tapped them to bring black and Jewish youths together. At first, they held tense face-to-face meetings, trying to deal with myths and misunderstandings. There was a lot of pain. A lot to learn.

“I found out that they (Jews) are not all millionaires, you know, and that a lot of them come from poor homes, too,” says T.J. “I found out why they wear the kind of clothes they wear, what it means to them. Stuff like that. And that they’re not all stuck up.”

For his part, Yudi says he’s learned that blacks are law-abiding people. He was amazed to discover that they worry about safety, families, good grades and jobs like anybody else.

“They’re very decent people, you know,” he says, circling T.J. in a boxer’s crouch. “I like ‘em. I’ve spent time with ‘em. We can talk now. That didn’t happen before.”

Gradually, says Lazerson, the teen-age dialogue spilled onto the basketball court, where kids learned to respect each other more. There have been some unforgettable moments--especially when the black teen-agers came to play in the old gymnasium of a Jewish school.

“A black kid came up to me and said he couldn’t play here,” Lazerson recalls. “When I asked why, he pointed out that there were large metal bolts sticking out of the backboard.

“ ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘You mean the rubber ball could get cut by the bolts?’ And he said, ‘No, man, my hands. My hands could get cut on the backboard.’

“Not one to miss a good line, I answered: ‘Uh, yeah, the yeshiva kids complain about that all the time.’ ”

Music provides the best communication of all. Lazerson is also a rock musician and has performed several rap songs stressing racial harmony. One, in particular, seems to have caught on in the neighborhood and, without much urging, T.J. and Yudi perform an impromptu break-dance on the sidewalk while Lazerson recites the pulsing lyrics.

He claps his hands and the scene becomes surreal: Hasidim on nearby stoops sway to the rhythm, while blacks put down groceries and boogie to the beat. The words are simple, yet they might be the last, best hope for Crown Heights. Something the old folks have forgotten:

Ain’t talkin’ in riddles, just callin’ attention

To something so obvious, you shouldn’t have to mention

Don’t care where you came from, don’t care where you’ve been

Don’t care how you dress, or if your hair’s a mess

Don’t care if you’re fat or where your bankroll’s at

Cause all these things mean nothing, my friend

They don’t really matter when you get to the end

In the final analysis . . . they all cause paralysis.