Newt talks with filmmaker Michael Pack about his new documentary, "Get the Jew: The Crown Heights Riot Revisited,” which examines the 1991 Crown Heights riot in New York City, the worst antisemitic riot in American history. The riot was triggered by a car accident involving a Hasidic Jewish driver and a black child, leading to violent attacks on the Jewish community. The documentary, part of the Wall Street Journal's Opinion Doc series, explores the historical context of Crown Heights, the racial tensions, and the media's portrayal of the events. Newt and Michael discuss the political and social implications of the riot, the role of the media, and the ongoing issue of antisemitism. Watch the film here: https://www.youtube.com/@WSJopinion
On this episode of Newsworld, The new documentary Get the Jew The Crown Heights Riot Revisited sheds light on the worst anti Semitic riot in American history, which occurred in New York City in nineteen ninety one. After a car crash in which a Hasidic Jewish driver accident, a hit and killed a black child, rioters set upon the local Jewish neighborhood in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Jews were attacked in the streets along with Jewish stores, homes, and cars. One Hasidic man who was stabbed to death. Mayored David Dinkins in the New York Police Department allowed the riot to rage for three full nights, egged on by racial provocateurs, while many in the media played down or excused the anti Semitism at the heart of the violence. The film was part of a new series produced by The Wall Street Journal's Opinion Docks series and is available on YouTube dot org. Here to talk about the film, I'm really pleased to welcome back my guest and good friend, Michael Pack. He is a documentary filmmaker and the president and CEO of Palladium Pictures. Michael, welcome and thank you for joining me on Nuts World.
Thank you for having me on newt Michael.
Can you describe Crown Heights historically for us?
I think that's a good question because the background of Crown Heights is important to understand the Crown Heights riots of nineteen ninety one. So Crown Heights, Brooklyn had historically been a Jewish neighborhood, and there were different sects and kinds of Jews that were there, Conservative, Reformed, Orthodox. But then in the sixties, black people started moving in, and there was the phenomenon of white flight, not uncommon throughout New York City, and in fact, black people moved in and middle class white people moved out, often in this case to Long Island or the Bronx. However, one group of Jewish people did not move out, and that was Khabad Lubavich, which is a kind of Hasidics act that had an internationally famous rabbi, the Rebbi Menachem Sheerson, and he had fled the Holocaust, and he was a world famous religious leader. Heads of Israel, presidents in the United States consulted and visited him, and he said he had fled the Holocaust, and he said, we live here we're not moving out. We can get along with the black people who've moved in.
We are staying. So they stayed.
And meanwhile, a lot of especially Haitian people and people from the Islands, had moved in, and a lot of Guyanese people. And there was tension throughout the sixties and seventies, And that was a period in New York City where there was violence in general, and there was violence in Crown Heights. Crown Heights was a poor neighborhood. The Jews there were poor and the Blacks there were poor, and there were tension, there was violence, and there was a feeling among some of the black people in that neighborhood that maybe the Jews were getting a better shape from the city. They seemed to be doing better than their black neighbors. The Jews might attribute it to harder work, the Blacks might attribute it to favors from the city. Anyway, tensions were strong, rising into the seventies and eighties, and then right before the Crown Heights riot, there was in New York City in general, a wave of black nationalism. Prior news item of this sort that was covered at the time concerned Leonard Jeffries, who is Haking Jeffries, the current Minority leader of the House's uncle, and he had been the head of African American studies at the City University of New York, and he had made controversial anti submitted comments. He called white people ice people and black people some people implied that they were completely different. One was good, one was bad. He talked about Jewish people being involved in the slave trade and being responsible for this and that ill and this was highly controversial at the time. It was also the time that Lewis Farakhan was much in the news with similar comments, so tensions were high leading into the summer of nineteen ninety one, which was a very hot summer in New York.
How much do you think something as simple as the heat, the lack of air conditioning, and people living in tenements with no place to go, how much that just the physical discomfort contribute to what would happen.
I think it has a lot to do with it.
You know, people were hot, they were uncomfortable, and they were out on the streets. I mean, this was somewhat similar to the George Floyd riots, where people were out on the street because they had been cooped up in COVID. So a lot of those things I think exacerbate pre existing tensions, and that was certainly true for this hot summer in August of nineteen ninety one.
What was the trigger point? I mean, why did this suddenly explode?
Well, the Rebbi Menachem Schneerson every month visited the graves of his recently deceased wife and his predecessor several miles away in Queen's and then he would go there every month, and he was accompanied by a police escort because he was an internationally known and important religious figure.
So he was coming back.
There was a police escort in front. His car was number two, and a third car was behind him with Yosa Flish, one of his assistants, and two others, and they were.
Going through a light. Some say it was yellow, some say it was red.
And the first two cars went through what was green, and this third car, driven by Yosa Fish either ran the yellow or the red to follow. The police car was flashing its lights and sirens, and he may well have thought he still had the ok to go ahead, but he crashed into another car and he careened off. That other car hit some say a pillar, and then he smashed off that pillar and then pinned two young Guyanese children who were playing with their bicycles on the street, and they got pinned under his car. One of them later died, Gavin Cato, and one of them his cousin, later lived.
But there was this crash, and right.
Away, because it was a hot summer and people were on the street, crowds gathered and people were shouting.
He did it on purpose.
The Jewish ambulance that came first left without treating the black people. The Jews are getting away with something. We've got to punish the Jews. And in fact, you know, Charles Price, one of the people there, really whipped up the crowd and said, you.
Know, let's go get the Jews and mobs the.
Black people then went out through Crown Heights and three hours later the accident happened at eight. At about eleven that night, this crowd with Charles Price ran into a Hasidic student who happened not to be Abade, but a Hasidic student who was dressed in the black hat and the black coat that clearly marked him as Jewish. And they said there's a Jew, let's get them, hence their title get the Jew and they ganged up on them. They beat him and one of them had a knife, Lemerick Nelson, and he stabbed Jackel Rosenbaum multiple times. And then jackle Rosenbaum was taken to a hospital and died, but the riots continued. That was the day one of the riots.
But let me say this a second, he goes if I understand it, Grecly Rosenbaum is a Jewish University of Melbourne student.
Yes, he's from Australia. He was a graduate student doing his studies on anti Semitism and treatment of Jews, and he was researching that in the United States. That's right.
He clearly has nothing to do except he's a random target. It's an additional tragedy about this whole event. We go ahead.
That was day one, which ended really in Jack Rosenbaum's death. But by day two Al Sharpton and other people had come in from other burrows. Al Sharpton says he was invited by Gavin Kato's father who had been killed, and there were then riots and it whipped up a frenzy and the police seemed to be standing around and doing nothing. And that went on for days, days until the police chief, the first black police chief in the first Black Mayor David Dinkins were themselves attacked and then they said let's end the riot, and it ended three hours later. So one of the questions the documentary poses is why the delay, Why the unwillingness to stop this riot.
Why do you think the police chief and the mayor took that position.
We asked the question in the film, But to my mind, it is because they were afraid of taking on the left wing of their party, the Black nationalists, the radical wing. They just felt they could not offend them. You know. Significantly, the mayor David Dinkins went to the funeral of Gavin Cato as well he should, but he did not attend the funeral of the ankle Rosenbaum, and I think he felt that he couldn't offend this wing of his party and he let it go, I believe nude. It's also somewhat parallel to what happened on college campuses recently, where there was anti Semitic chance and harassment of students and college presidents felt they couldn't act.
In your judgment, is the depth of anti semitism that deep in the system, and we've just been underestimating it. Because it doesn't spring forth.
I think it is pretty deep. And you know, I'm Jewish, and it's always shocking when it kind of rises to the surface, as it did in the campus as recently, and as it did in Frown Heights in nineteen ninety one.
I think it's prett shocking.
And I hear from my Abad connections in Crown Heights that their view is it's an ongoing problem. They feel it's happened continuously since nineteen ninety one. It may be at a peak now, but in their mind never stops. It's a very hard phenomenon to explain, but it does run deep.
What was the role of the news media for those two or three days. Was there media condemnation of the riots or was the media also intimidated.
We interviewed New York Times reporter Ari Goldman, who covered the riots for the New York Times, and he says that he would call into the New York Times in those days, you would go out on the field, do the reporting, phone it in to your editor, and the editor would write it up and put on a headline. So Ari would say he would be phoning it in and the headlines would come back, you know, Blacks and Jews fight in Crown Heights. And after days of this, Ari said, we're getting it wrong. It's not blacks and Jews are fighting each other. Blacks are beating up Jews. That's what's happening. That's the story. But The New York Times was resistant to covering it that way. And this is sort of shocking to.
Most of us.
I mean, the New York Times owned by Jewish people. You think they would want to cover it in the straightforward manner that it was required to be covered.
But that did not happen.
A lie to that is the failure of a lot of mainstream Jewish organizations to condemn it. A Foxman, who is then the head of the ADL, the Anti Defamation League, apologized for not condemning it at the time.
Was that in part.
Because the core group that was involved were seen as outside the mainstream of most American Jews or was there sort of a sense of their different Yeah, I think that's.
Exactly what it was. Newte They're different.
They dress like they were in eighteenth century Poland, they speak Yiddish, they don't live on the Upper East Side or the Upper West Side, they don't go to zabar As they're culturally different. This is just happening to them way over there in Brooklyn, not our problem. But as those very same people found this last year during these protests on college campuses, that their own sons and daughters are not immune to harassment along those lines too. And it's never just those Jews over there, not for the more liberal Jews, and not for the non Jews either.
It's interesting also that has hitting Jews in Crown Heights decided that they would take it and stay and fight it out. And to the best of my knowledge, they're still overwhelmingly in Crown Heights.
On they they are overwhelmingly in Crown Heights. I will say that the Crown Heights neighborhood, just to update our earlier discussion of this, has now been pretty gentrified. I mean, it was a rough neighborhood in the seventies, eighties and into the nineties. It's not such a rough neighborhood now. I mean it can be rough at moments, but it's really much more gentrified. Apartments are much more expensive.
But that did not stop.
Our film ends with a stabbing in Crown Heights just this last month, where another young Hasidic man was stabbed by a black man saying free Palestine and do you want to die stabbed.
Luckily, this time he was.
Stabbed and suffered only minor wounds. But it's the same thing again and again in Crown Heights. So it's changed, but some things are staying the same, and not good things.
You point out that when finally Mary Dinkins does go to Crown Heights to tell a crowd not to use violence, they attacked him.
Indeed, I mean that's the thing. There's now appeasing these people. I mean, that is the problem that Democrats have with the left wing of their party. They cannot be appeased. It's a tricky thing. Even if you politically want to appease them, it kind of can't be done. Whatever Mery Dinkins did was not enough for them. Bottles were thrown him, his black police chief had his car attacked. He had to call for help. So it was at that point that they called for the riot to end.
And did they just ended with the New York Police Department.
Yeah, they called in Ray Kelly, who was then a deputy police chief later to be police chief, and said, and the riot and he did the things that you do to end riots. At the time, he brought in horses, he blocked off streets with big vans. He didn't just let people run loose. And within hours, according to Ray Kelly, who we interviewed, it ended within hours. So it wasn't that hard to end. I mean, the demonstrations went on, the tensions went on, but the rioting ended.
I mean I always thought, for example, with the various Columbia University, he would take one day of seriousness and the whole thing would collapse, but the leadership won't be serious.
That's right.
I think at Colombia they kind of waffled. They sent in the police, and they apologized for sending in the police. And you know, you can't have it every which way, and that's really a problem.
It's a psychological challenge. They want to be loved, but they also want to be authorities.
That's correct, and you can't do both.
So from Dinkin's standpoint, what was the effect on him politically after the riot, Well, we.
Believe that it's one of the reasons he lost the next mayoral election to Rudy Giuliani. As Elliot Kaufman, the Well Street Journal opinion writer whose work this is based on, points out you would think that he would lose a lot of the Jewish vote, but he only lost three percent of the Jewish vote compared to his previous election. He lost votes among white ethnics in the outer boroughs like Staten Island and Queens who just didn't like to see riots in their city, and that turned it for Rudy Giuliani, who ran on a law and order campaign.
So it did not work.
And I don't actually think appeasing your violent friend ever works. It looks like it's going to work, it looks like it can be a balancing act, but it doesn't work well.
And there are also a lot of good lessons through that in the Middle East. Indeed, which is why I'm very much for what net Yahoo's doing, and I think that it's nice to find it policy based on reality and not on fantasy. I was only surprised by the way on your research, I didn't realize how close it was with everything that had gone wrong, the city is still so democratic that Rudy barely wins.
That's a good point.
I mean, I think one of the problems in American cities is that so many of them are just one party cities where the other party has which is usually the Republican Party, has no chance, and it's very tough to have a one party anything. You know, there's corruption, there's just kind of laziness, there's extremes. I think this was what happened to many of the cities across the country during the George Floyd protests. They're run by a democratic elite that is crippled, but you know, is looking to protecting their extreme than anyone in the middle. It's an amazing thing in a way that Rudy Giuliotti did win that election, and in fact he turned the city around.
Yeah. No, it's one of the great success stories of the late twentieth century. Why did you decide to do a documentary specifically about the Crown Heights riot.
Well, it's part of this new collaboration that my company, Plating Pictures has with the Wall Street Journal Opinion section, and we have collaborated to do a series of documentaries, maybe three to six a year that will tell stories that maybe the mainstream media has ignored or misreported, or simply have failed to notice. These are stories that I think are important to tell. We want to tell them in this same format of twenty to thirty minute short documentaries. This is a format pioneered by the New York Times op docs. The Atlantic has a series like that, The New Yorker has a series like that, and they all come from a progressive left perspective. So where are the stories that Wolfty Journal opinion readers might think are important, that have maybe been forgotten like the Crown Heights riot, but are relevant today. And there are a whole bunch of those that are left on a table, from stories about the George Floyd protests or COVID recent past to nineteen ninety one. And we need to understand our history if we're not going to repeat it, and in the Crown Heights case, it looks like we are repeating it.
So it's good to.
Learn those lessons, and it's important to tell those stories. And although this is a partnership with the Wolfstet Journal Opinion section, we aspire to tell these stories in a straightforward, fact based narrative way, which I think we've done with the Crown Heights story.
You make a point that the rise in anti Semitism is happening in France, It's happening in Britain as well as the United States. I mean, there's something really dangerous. I think about the wave we're currently living through. It has the potential to do current and permanent damage.
I think it really does.
I think it may be comforting to some to think of it as only anti Semitism, but I think it's almost always closely allied to fear of the modern world and closely allied to hatred of America, as it is in the Middle East, you know, the Little Satan in the Great Satan Israel. In America, these are tied to other really dangerous ideas. That it's bad enough anti Semitism per se, but it doesn't even stop there. And you're right, it's in worldwide phenomena.
So when somebody sees this film, do you have a message you hope they'll leave with.
I hope that they can see current events through this lens, understand that this sort of pattern has a history. Instead of man that it not be repeated, demand that our leader shows some courage, you know, not let this go on. That's sort of the message. Of course, we also want people who see it to continue to watch of our upcoming Wall Street Journal opinion docs.
Well, so I was going to ask you that do you have any notion yet of what some future topics might be.
We do. The very next one is almost finished, and it's a documentary about the prime ministership of Liz Trust, who is the shortest lived prime minister in British history forty four days, and we tell the story of her time as Prime Minister.
It's called The Prime Minister Versus.
The Blob because Liz Trust feels that she was done in by the British version of the administrative State or the swamp, which they call the Blob. Actually, I think a better name for it. So we have her tell how that worked out, to play it out, and we have some people who disagree with her, from both her own party, the Tory Party and the Labor Party making the opposite case. But it includes a very long interview with Liz Trust and explains her point of view, and I think it's an important point of view, and that this way it's just like Crown Heights, it's got an American parallel.
There are people that I know, and.
I'm sure we both know, who feel that President Trump's problem with the administrative State had to do with his unusual personality of his governing style and maybe his lack of knowledge about government. But Liz trust is like the opposite of Donald Trump. She's a completely different personality. She's been in government a long time. If she too is done in by the administrative state, it shows you that's a problem with the sort of elites across the West. So that one's coming up in November.
I find her to be a very interesting person and I think that probably the Tory Party would have been better off had she survived.
I think that is true. Certainly they couldn't be worse off. The idea that they fixed those problems is not what happened. And now they have the Labor Party, so that can happen to us too. We also have coming up up something I mentioned to you in our last podcast. I think my son Thomas was on too. We have this incubator to train young right of center Thomas lakes to say, non woke filmmakers. We had a class of four this year and we're accepting new applicants on our website, which is pladio pictures dot com. But the first four have finished their films and they're also short films, and they're also on important and neglected topics, and I hope we can come back and discuss them when those films are finished too.
Gladium Pictures as an incubator project, and so somebody who's listening to us, who knows some young person who'd like to get into film, they want to go to Pladium Pictures to look at what you're doing and how to apply.
That's right, it has an apply now button. We encourage anyone to apply. I mean they don't have to be young exactly. In our first class of four, we had a lot of people who had done other kinds of video work, perhaps for other organizations, think tanks or corporations, had never done a real documentary. So this was their chance to make their passion project and to learn storytelling, not just corporate work and not just advocacy work, but storytelling with real journalism and reporting behind it, which I think is important. I think it's the right way to make documentaries. But it's also important if you want to reach people who are in the middle of the country, who are undecided, who are maybe not complete partisans of one side or the other.
I think if you tell straightforward, fact.
Based stories, those people can be both engaged and have their minds changed.
Well, and people who want to see more about this can go to Palladium Pictures dot com. You've been one of the pioneer conservative filmmakers.
How long have you been doing this?
Well, my wife doesn't like me to say this, but I started my company, my first company, Manifold Productions, in nineteen seventy seven, a long time ago, writs to say she was a little child.
Both of you were children at the time.
That lasts for children, It's been a long time.
I will say that I think recently the conservative movement as a whole has woken up to the need to tell stories through film and documentary and not just books and think tanks and white papers. I would like to return the compliment nude in that I think you and Callista have done more than your part in this area too, and you are one of the few who, in addition to all your other work, also have time to make documentary films and recognize its importance. But the conservative movement has been slow to do that, and I think to its detriment and to the detriment of the country. Country needs two sides, not just one.
I think what you're doing is an extraordinary, important contribution. And I hope that this new generation of conservative directors and producers that you're helping grow are going to play a major role in getting the country to learn and to be healthier in better place. And I think that's really really important.
I completely agree with I mean, one of the important things. We need to wake up the whole conservative movement because the left has an entire ecosystem supporting their filmmakers from film schools which are all woke progressive institutions. Some of them advertised that they train people who.
Make advocacy videos.
So there are four thousand colleges and universities around the country graduating tens of thousands of want to be filmmakers progressive filmmakers a year. And from there they go on to have funding sources from the Ford Foundation, the Carthur Foundation, and distributors that specialize in social justice films, to film festivals like sun Dance that are woke, and so there's an entire structure and the left has built it up by investing their time, money, and creativity in it for the last fifty years. We need to catch up and do exactly what they're doing with our ideas instead of their ideas. I always say they're to be commended for fighting for their ideas. That's what you're supposed to do.
We need to fight for.
Hours, and it's so the responsibility of people who are conservative to do that and not blame the left.
I think you're entirely right, and I hope some of our listeners will take this to heart and both support rising young conservative filmmakers and in a couple cases, maybe actually become a filmmaker. And they can do that in part by communicating with you through Palladium Pictures dot com. Michael, I want to thank you for joining me and your new film Get the Jew The Crown Heights Riot Revisited is a stunning look back at the worst antisemitic ride in American history, which occurred amazingly in New York City in nineteen ninety one, and our listeners can watch the film by going to YouTube dot com slash at Wsjopinion.
Thank you for having me on nute.
Thank you to my guest Michael Pack. You can get a link to watch his new film Get the Jew the Crown Heights f I had revisited on our show page at Newtsworld dot com. Newsworld is produced by Gingrish three sixty and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is Guernsey Sloan and our researcher is Rachel Peterson. The artwork for the show was created by Steve Penley. Special thanks to the team at Gingris three sixty. If you've been enjoying Newtsworld, I hope you'll go to Apple Podcast and both rate us with five stars and give us a review so others can learn what it's all about. Right now, listeners of Newtsworld consigner from my three freeweekly columns at gingristree sixty dot com slash newsletter. I'm Newt Gingrich. This is Newtsworld.