Friday, December 10, 2021
Two years later, Jersey City and Hasidic community ready to move on from Dec. 10 mass shooting
The building on Martin Luther King Drive in Jersey City looks like so many others you see during the coronavirus pandemic — a storefront with a metal rolldown door locked in place, in a sort of permanent limbo.
There is nothing to remind people that this is the kosher market where two years ago Dec. 10, three people were gunned down, a short time after a Jersey City police officer was shot dead by the same gunmen in a different part of town.
The Hasidic Jewish and Black communities that share the Greenville neighborhood prefer it that way, saying it's time to move on and leave the mass shooting as a distant memory.
Baruch Lepkivker, rabbi of the Sons of Israel Nusach Chabad in Journal Square, said the general feeling of the people he has spoken with is "let's forget about it and let's hope life will go on." He says people are still trying to cope with the tragedy.
Lepkivker, who lives in Greenville, said the victims are honored often on various anniversaries, but otherwise, this day is remembered "in a more private way."
Moshe Schapiro, rabbi of Chabad of Hoboken and Jersey City, said the Hasidic community doesn't focus on Dec. 10, 2019, the day the shooting occurred. If anything, "they just use (that day) to remind themselves to be careful and vigilant."
More evidence that the many would rather leave the tragedy behind them is that no public events are planned for Friday to honor those who died that day. Only a menorah lighting last week to mark the start of Hanukkah, at city hall with Mayor Steve Fulop, Gov. Phil Murphy and city council members, commemorated the tragedy.
In September, Bayonne dedicated a park bench and an access road at 16th Street DiDomenico Park to Jersey City Detective Joseph Seals, one of the four victims killed. And a small plaque was placed in Bayview Cemetery in Jersey City, where he was killed.
Mindel Ferencz, 31, who owned the store on MLK Drive with her husband; Moshe Deutsch, 24, a Brooklyn rabbinical student and customer; and store employee Douglas Miguel Rodriguez were also killed that day.
Their killers, David Anderson, 47, and Francine Graham, 50, were shot dead by police who stormed the storefront hours into the shootout.
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