(Jewish) Boston area rallies after Chabad rabbis are targeted with anti-Semitic slurs on Shabbat

BOSTON (JTA) — More than 350 people gathered for a rally against anti-Semitism and hate in Peabody, a city on Boston’s North Shore, after motorists shouted anti-Semitic slurs at two Chabad rabbis out walking on Shabbat.

Wednesday’s rally was called by Mayor Ted Bettencourt to support Rabbi Nechemia Schusterman of Chabad of Peabody and Rabbi Sruli Baron of Tobin Bridge Chabad in Chelsea, a city just outside of Boston.

The two friends were out on a walk on Saturday, May 25, when a group of about three or four pickup trucks slowed alongside them, Schusterman reported to the Peabody police. The driver of the lead truck shouted an anti-Semitic obscenity and hurled a penny out of his window, yelling “something to the effect of ‘go pick up the penny [expletive] Jew,” Schusterman reported.

The rabbi later wrote about it publicly on his Facebook page and in “Yes, I look Jewish: Hate on Lowell Street,” a front page essay published last week in the North Shore’s Jewish Journal.

“Walking and chatting and visibly Jewish – kippas, beards and tzitzits flying about – was apparently too much for a bunch of pickup truck drivers,” he wrote.

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