Knife attack during Hanukkah

Monsey, in Rockland County north of New York, is home to one of the highest concentrations of Hasidic Jews outside Israel. On December 28, 2019, the seventh night of Hanukkah, a man entered the home of Rabbi Chaim Rottenberg, where about a hundred people had gathered for the candle lighting, and struck with a machete before fleeing. Josef Neumann, gravely wounded in the head, never regained consciousness and succumbed several months later. The attack closed a year in which street assaults against visibly observant Jews had multiplied in New York and the surrounding region, often carried out by isolated perpetrators with no connection to one another. The perpetrator, found not criminally responsible under state law, was convicted at the federal level.