Today In History: 5 Years Since the Tragic Jersey City Attack

By Y.M. Lowy

Today marks the day when four people were horrifically murdered in the Jersey City Kosher Market terror attack.

Just a few short years after dozens of families had relocated from Brooklyn to Jersey City to build a growing kehilla, this devastating event struck at the heart of their efforts, leaving the entire Jewish world reeling as updates of the attack unfolded.

On December 10, 2019, David N. Anderson and Francine Graham committed what prosecutors called “a hate-fueled domestic terror attack.”

Anderson and Graham fatally shot Leah Mindel Ferencz, the wife of the owner, Moshe David Ferencz. She was 33 and the mother of three children. She and her husband were among the first people who moved to Jersey City and opened the grocery store to help grow the community. They also shot and killed her cousin and customer Moshe Hersh Deitsch, 24, and employee Douglas Miguel Rodriguez, 49.

Just before the grocery store attack, a Jersey City Police Department detective had been shot and killed by the assailants at a nearby cemetery. Detective Joseph Seals, husband and father of 5, noticed Anderson and Graham who looked suspicious, wearing military gear and driving a stolen U-Haul van that was linked to a murder the previous weekend of Jersey City resident Michael Rumberger. Authorities believe that a much larger attack had been planned, but it was thwarted by the police detective's intervention at the Bayview Cemetery. 

After killing the Detective, the assailants fled in their stolen van and drove to the Jersey City Kosher Market to continue their murder spree. 

They also wounded one customer and two police officers before being killed by police during an ensuing shootout that lasted longer than 3 hours.

The analysis of the assailants' computers showed that they intended to do more harm, that the yeshiva attached to the store was the probable target of the attack, and that they "moved more quickly" with their plans because of their encounter with Detective Seals.

In the aftermath of the tragedy, the Kehilla, still mourning their recent loss found moments to thank Hashem for the open miracles they had witnessed among the horror. Though the loss was devastating, they marveled at how the attackers had not entered the yeshiva, sparing dozens of children from unimaginable danger and the many people rescued from flying bullets in the shooting zone, including hemishe children on the street and Moshe Hersh’s friend, Chaim Lax, who was able to escape the grocery through the back door. 

Photos: Hershy Rubinstein/JDN