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New York|Rabbi Shmuel Butman, 81, a Brooklyn Voice of Ultra-Orthodox Jews, Is Dead
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/14/nyregion/rabbi-shmuel-butman-dead.html
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He was the public face of the Chabad-Lubavitch sect during the Crown Heights riots in 1991 and for decades lit its giant menorah in Manhattan every Hanukkah.
Aug. 14, 2024, 6:34 p.m. ET
Rabbi Shmuel Butman, who was the public face of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic sect during the antisemitic riots in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, in 1991 and literally a keeper of that ultra-Orthodox Jewish movement’s flame by illuminating its menorah — billed as the world’s largest — across from Central Park every Hanukkah for decades, died on July 22 in Manhattan. He was 81.
His death, at a hospital, was announced on the Chabad-Lubavitch community website, which said he had been experiencing heart problems.
Rabbi Butman, as executive director of the Lubavitch Youth Organization at the time, became the spokesman for his tight-knit ultra-Orthodox community in Crown Heights after Yankel Rosenbaum, a 29-year-old Hasidic scholar visiting from Australia, was stabbed to death by a mob of Black youths hours after a 7-year-old Black boy, Gavin Cato, was struck and killed by a car in the Lubavitch Grand Rabbi’s motorcade on Aug. 19, 1991.
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The deaths set off four days of unrest between Black residents and Jews in racially-mixed Crown Heights, home of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement’s world headquarters. Mainstream Jewish organizations condemned the looting, vandalism, threats and physical violence that followed, but they initially stopped short of accusing the rioters of antisemitism.
Black residents said they were protesting what they perceived as preferential treatment accorded to the Hasidim by the police. They further contended that paramedics who had responded to the car accident had paid more attention to the Hasidic people in the car than to Gavin and one of his cousins, also 7, who was injured. Yosef Lifsh, the driver of the vehicle that struck and killed Gavin, was not charged.
