Melbourne, Australia — VIN News has learned, Prof. Norman Rosenbaum of Melbourne, Australia has reached out to conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh to offer assistance in the ongoing war of words , which Sharpton alleges that Limbaugh “erroneously” characterizes his (Sharpton’s) role in a string of violent incidents in New York in the early 90’s.

Rosenbaum, VIN readers will remember, is the crusading brother of Yankel Rosenbaum, who was murdered by black teen rioter Lemrick Nelson on the first night of the Crown Heights pogrom. Nelson was acquitted by an all-black jury despite airtight and incontrovertible evidence.

Rosenbaum is sending Limbaugh a copy of the Girgenti Report, which clearly lists Sharpton’s criminal and inciteful actions during and after the pogrom. The Report is named after its author, former New York government official Richard Girgenti, whose report many felt didn’t go far enough in condemning Sharpton.

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NEW YORK, NY — They were two fathers caught up in the storm of the 1991 Crown Heights riots - one black, the other white - who bonded over the shared grief of losing their sons.

Carmel Cato and Max Rosenbaum reached out to each other in their darkest hour to heal a borough split along racial lines.

Cato, 56, reached out again to Rosenbaum's family Tuesday, placing a long distance call to Australia to express condolences over his old friend's death.

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TODAY, jailbird Lemrick Nelson walks the streets a free man, but the Rosenbaum family remains imprisoned in a mind-boggling system of junk justice.

To the ugly cries of a wolf pack chanting, "Get the Jew, kill the Jew," Lemrick Nelson stabbed Yankel Rosenbaum, an Australian student, four times during a race riot on Aug. 19, 1991.

Yankel died the next day in Kings County Hospital from wounds inflicted by the worm, Nelson.

This morning, Yankel's mother, Fay, father, Max, and brother, Norman, will walk into Brooklyn Supreme Court at 10 a.m. — the fourth trial of this nightmare.

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By: Kati Cornell Smith

March 21, 2005 -- Less than 14 years after the death of a Hasidic scholar stabbed at the peak of the Crown Heights riots, the man who wielded the knife is walking free.

Lemrick Nelson, 29, has been released from a halfway house where he lived for nine months while finishing a 10-year federal prison sentence for violating the civil rights of Yankel Rosenbaum.

Nelson's lawyers told The Post he is working full-time in the bakery industry and intends to continue his education. "He's looking to put all this behind him. But there's not a day that goes by when he doesn't think of Yankel Rosenbaum," attorney Peter Quijano said.

Nelson, who was released earlier this month, was spared a possible life sentence in 2003 when a federal jury found that, although he stabbed Rosenbaum, he didn't cause his death.

He is now living with his mother in New Jersey while he serves a 27-month term of probation, sources said.

Rosenbaum's relatives believe it's only a matter of time before Nelson engages in new violence.

"Lemrick Nelson is a bad person. Until I see something tangible to the contrary, he's a threat to society," the victim's brother, Norman Rosenbaum, said in a phone interview.

Nelson was 16 years old when he attacked Rosenbaum, 29 on Aug. 19, 1991, during race riots sparked by the death of a black child who'd been struck by a car in the grand rebbe's motorcade.

He beat a state murder rap the following year, but was convicted of federal civil-rights violations in 1997. A judge sentenced him to nearly 20 years, but an appeals court later tossed that verdict based on jury-selection problems.

Nelson's 2003 retrial finally resulted in a standing conviction for violating Rosenbaum's civil rights.

Admitting that the hospital that treated Yankel Rosenbaum 14 years ago made errors, the city on Friday reached a $1.25-million settlement with the family of the slain doctoral student.

The negotiated settlement was announced Friday in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn, where a jury was deliberating a $10-million malpractice lawsuit brought by the family shortly after Rosenbaum's death in 1991.

The Rosenbaum family, which could not be reached for comment, had recently declined a city offer to settle the case for $1 million because city officials would not admit that Kings County Hospital had botched Rosenbaum's care.

Rosenbaum was stabbed four times by Lemrick Nelson on Aug. 20, 1991, during a race riot in Crown Heights that erupted after a Hasidic driver accidentally struck and killed Gavin Cato, 7, an African-American boy.

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SYDNEY, Australia — Max Rosenbaum, whose son Yankel was killed in an assault that fueled violent race riots in New York in 1991, has died after suffering a major heart attack, relatives said Sunday. He was 85.

Rosenbaum died at a hospital in Melbourne late Friday, said his surviving son, Norman.

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Fourteen tumultuous years have done little to heal the hurt of Fay Rosenbaum, whose son Yankel was stabbed to death in a 1991 race riot that came to symbolize a dark and angry period in the city's history.

Rosenbaum's family, including the 71-year-old matriarch, is back in the city from Australia, once again seeking justice in the Hasidic scholar's death. This time, they want to show that Yankel Rosenbaum got shoddy treatment from city doctors after Lemrick Nelson left him dying on a Crown Heights street.

"I don't forgive and I don't forget," Fay, 71, told the Daily News in an exclusive interview Wednesday, just before the Brooklyn Supreme Court judge hearing the family's civil case against the city issued a gag order.

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CROWN HEIGHTS, Brooklyn [NY1] — On Tuesday, Brooklyn marked the 17th anniversary of the Crown Heights riots, one of its darkest episodes.

The violence was sparked by the death of a seven-year-old black boy, Gavin Cato, who was hit by a car driven by a Hasidic Jew.

When it was over, 29-year-old rabbinical student Yankel Rosenbaum was dead.

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The man at the center of the 1991 Crown Heights riot now lives incognito in a New Jersey town, untroubled by memories of his terrible deed.

“Up until today, I left it alone,” Lemrick Nelson Jr., now 34, told The Post. “I don't even think about it.”

“That was 19 years ago,” he said about fatally stabbing Hasid scholar Yankel Rosenbaum at the height of the notorious race riot. “I was a kid then. I made a mistake. Kids make mistakes. I'm a man now. I've never been in or out of trouble. I don't live that life.”

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… A New York City jury acquits 17-year-old Lemrick Nelson of murdering Yankel Rosenbaum, an Australian Hasidic scholar killed in rioting in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn in August 1991 following the traffic death of a black child hit by a Hasidic driver.

This from the Australian newspaper “Herald Sun”.

Hospital settlement won’t end Norman Rosenbaum’s quest for justice in ’91 Crown Heights slaying.

Nearly 14 years after the death of Yankel Rosenbaum at the outset of the Crown Heights riots, his brother says he will continue fighting for action, even after a settlement last week over faulty medical treatment at Kings County Hospital seemed to signal the final chapter in the saga.

“This does not close the book,” Norman Rosenbaum, an Australian lawyer, said Monday. “We are exploring what options exist.”

Those options, he said, might include legal recourse against the doctors who cared for his brother.

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Crown Heights used to be synonymous for tensions between blacks and Jews. In the following Brooklyn, Then & Now report, NY1’s Jeanine Ramirez looks back at the days when those tensions came to a boiling point, and how community leaders hope a new approach will make such confrontations a thing of the past.

The wounds were still raw in 1992, and the anger of blacks and Jews in Crown Heights surfaced once again.

Hasidic Jews took to the streets in protest after the acquittal of Lemerick Nelson in his first trial for the death of Yankel Rosenbaum. There were random fights, and a march over the bridge. Nelson was the only one arrested in Rosenbaum's stabbing death in the riots the summer before.

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All criminal charges against Adelaide Rabbi, Yossi Engel and his wife Chana, were today dismissed in the Adelaide Magistrates’ Court.

Rabbi Engel is the Director of Chabad of South Australia and the Spiritual Leader of the Jewish Learning Centre of Adelaide.

Rabbi and Mrs Engel had each been charged with 39 offences for falsifying documents with the intention to deceive and gain benefit. These charges related to applications by the Spirit of David Adelaide Hebrew School for government funding.

When called upon by the Court, the South Australian Police, who prosecuted the cases, had no evidence whatsoever to lead against either the Rabbi or his wife.

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When their religious new year begins at sundown Monday, Jews across the world will begin a 10-day period of spiritual reflection to atone for their wrongdoing and reconcile with God. For many, holiday worship also will have an impact on their wallets.

Synagogues often charge hundreds of dollars for tickets to attend services for Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, called the High Holy Days because they are among the most sacred in the Jewish calendar.

The expense of participating has become a simmering issue within the Jewish community, with leaders trying to balance their desire to strengthen observance with the need to cover costs. There also is a fear that high-priced tickets create a disincentive for Jews who don't belong to a synagogue.

"The holidays are a time for people to connect. When you distract it with money, it chases people away," said Rabbi Eliyahu Schusterman, whose Hasidic Chabad Intown congregation has rented out an Atlanta hotel to offer free services to worshippers.

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Investigation into suspected price-fixing finds grand jury asking for documents from major meat packers

Several of the nation's kosher slaughterhouses and suppliers have been served with federal subpoenas in connection with an investigation of possible antitrust practices, according to a statement by one of those suppliers.

A lawyer for AgriProcessors, the nation's largest kosher slaughterhouse, in Postville, Iowa, confirmed yesterday that the company received a grand jury subpoena requesting documents, as did a number of other meat packers. AgriProcessors is owned by Aaron Rubashkin, a Lubavitch Jew who moved from Brooklyn to northern Iowa in 1987 and who sells kosher meats under the labels Rubashkin's and Aaron's Best.

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Hollywood · A tense encounter between a police officer and Justice Department employee last week outside a controversial synagogue has sparked outrage from both sides and demands that supervisors investigate.

The U.S. Department of Justice is locked in a legal battle with Hollywood over alleged religious discrimination by the city.

In 2005, the agency joined the Chabad Lubavitch's lawsuit, filed in 2004, against Hollywood over the city's attempts to oust the Chabad from the single-family home it had converted into a synagogue in Hollywood Hills.

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We thought we knew what happened in Crown Heights and who did it. Turns out we were wrong.

We had the major players right but we were foggy onaction and motivation, even though we had watched scenes from the riot on the nightly news; heard commentary from religious leaders, politicians, and community leaders; and lived through the aftermath listening to everyone’s take on what happened.

Certain facts are not in dispute: In August 1991, seven-year-old Gavin Cato, an African-American, was run over by a van driven by a hasidic Jew in a section of Brooklyn known as Crown Heights, a neighborhood where blacks and hasidim lived side by side but did not interact. Several hours later, Yankel Rosenbaum, an Orthodox Jew from Australia, was assaulted by a band of young African Americans and stabbed several times by at least one of them, Lemrick Nelson. These names are part of our collective memory. The rest of the story, however, takes different shapes depending upon the teller.

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Building on the incredible success of the past four years, this year’s National Jewish Retreat by JLI promises to be the best yet. Situated at the magnificent Hyatt Regency in Reston, Virginia, the national retreat will feature world renowned dynamic speakers, a five-star menu and interactive workshops and seminars in an enhanced and expanded program.

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This in from the Inbox

There has been much ado sparked from the tragic murder of R' Efraim Klein, may G-D avenge his blood. I do not claim to know Efraim well, although i have spoken to him on a few occasions. He was a nice man and a figure of 770 that will not be forgotten.

But these following words will not be masked and enclothed in false “Love” and “Care” about the community, or Efraim; rather they will depict the cold, hard facts that many chose to ignore. This community has been getting more dangerous in the past eighteen months; no longer can one walk on the street without thinking “what if”, and “crown and Schenectady” considered “Safe”. Many mothers worry in horror about their children walking at night in the streets of crown heights, which were once considered safe. Residents of crown heights are growing and scared and worried – and for valid reasons. Crime.

The crime in this community is escalating; the holy puritan neighborhood of Crown Heights is becoming a safe haven for criminals. But many people refuse to recognize these facts, and instead, turn to their self righteousness and political agendas to speak for themselves; as a resident of crown heights, I was interested in hearing the words of the political leaders of the community and region. I was unpleasant(ly surprised) to hear more praise for the police and the reverse race-card. This was something that made me sick. Is this what people think about after someone gets killed? It hasn't been less than twenty four hours since the ‘Retziche’, and i'm hearing words about racial tension (or the lack of). Excuse my French, but who the hell said anything about racial tension? Who said anything about a hate crime? Is every murder in this community due to a lack of “tolerance”? Yes, certainly crime is done out of the lack of tolerance of self control, but does every crime have to be traced to Nazi Germany or the 1991 pogroms?

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The Landmark Preservation Commission will today consider adding Crown Heights to the list of landmarked city neighborhoods, a list that includes much of the Upper East and West Sides, Brooklyn Heights, Park Slope, Greenwich Village, and TriBeCa.

Crown Heights has a more troubled reputation than those neighborhoods, dating back to the riot there in 1993 that included the stabbing death of Yankel Rosenbaum.

The proposed Crown Heights North historic district, which roughly includes the area around Dean Street between Bedford and Kingston Avenues. The proposed district contains more than 470 buildings — the largest historic district the commission has proposed in more than decade.

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Livingston, NJ — They used to be everywhere there were Jews. Mikvahs, ritual purification pools used by observant Jewish women, have been considered so important to Jewish communities that even a sacred Torah could be sold to build one.

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The breakneck rise and fall of New York developer Shaya Boymelgreen unfolds like a Gilded Age novel of social ascendance: young man immigrates to ethnic neighborhood in big city; accidentally takes part in Crown Heights riot of historic importance; strikes up fortuitous friendship with Uzbek diamond billionaire who agrees to bankroll his projects; gambles on some of boom era's most talked about and coveted developments; and then, as quickly as he rises, disappears, lawsuits and angry creditors chasing his wake.

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Chabad's intention is to help “bring the spirituality of Judaism to people,” as nearly 3,000 other Chabad centers worldwide do.

South Euclid, OH — As a business deal, it's small potatoes.

Cash-short Ohio Workman's Circle found a buyer for its South Euclid building and property.

“We needed the money to continue,” said Neil Grossman, financial officer for the secular-Jewish nonprofit social agency.

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Florida professor’s trial and acquittal generated little national coverage despite its consequences.

Perhaps no one since Adolph Eichmann has been charged with complicity in more Jewish murders than Sami Al-Arian, the Florida professor affiliated with Islamic Jihad.

The difference between Eichmann and Al-Arian is that in 1962, the year the Nazi was hanged for his crimes against humanity, the American public and the Jewish public cared. In 2005, with the lack of media coverage, maybe they weren’t given an opportunity to care.

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Until a few years ago, the Jews of the Lubavitch Hasidic sect living in Crown Heights told their children to not to venture south of Empire Boulevard into the African-American and Afro-Caribbean neighborhood of Flatbush. But crime has gone down ever since Rudy Giuliani’s anti-crime mayoral administration of the 1990s. Now the scene is different. A new Jewish-owned residential building is being erected on Lefferts Avenue in Flatbush. Nearby, developers are trying to put up luxury housing. A young Hasidic couple opened a stylish clothing store on the same street a few months ago.

“There is a big demand for Jews, more than ever before,” said Yossi Popack, a residential property owner in the area.

Property values are soaring in the heart of Hasidic Crown Heights. One could find a two bedroom apartment in the area of $1500, but most Hasidic families here have between eight and 12 children. A two family building has gone for over $700,000, something that might have sold for less than a quarter of a million dollars about a decade ago, according to one news report. And unless a Lubavitch family gets a job in another city, they stay in New York and want to remain within walking distance of their main synagogue on Eastern Parkway. Thus, Hasidic families are moving farther south and settling near and in Flatbush for cheaper living spaces in proximity to the synagogue. This is putting a strain on the African-American and Afro-Caribbean community and is adding to renewed tensions between these communities after more than a decade of calm since the infamous riots of 1991 that resulted in the murder of one foreign, Hasidic visitor.

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On March 1, 1994, a gunman in a car opened fire on a van carrying more than a dozen Hasidic students as it began to cross the Brooklyn Bridge from Manhattan, critically wounding two young men and injuring two others.

The lone gunman, driving a blue Chevrolet Caprice equipped with a submachine gun, two 9mm guns, and a “street sweeper” shotgun, pursued the van full of terrified students across the bridge.

He fired in three separate bursts, spraying both sides of the van. He then disappeared into traffic as the van came to a stop at the Brooklyn end of the bridge.

The injured Yeshiva students were among dozens who were returning from a Manhattan hospital where the spiritual leader of the Lubavitch movement, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, had undergone minor surgery.

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On March 1, 1994, Rashid Baz a Lebanese national opened fire on a van carrying more than a dozen Hasidic students as it began to cross the Brooklyn Bridge from Manhattan, one of those passengers was Ari. He sustained a mortal injury to his head which resulted in his very untimely death five days later, on Chof Gimmel Adar, at the age of 16.

A chronicle of the events that had taken place can be read in the Extended Article. (Taken from the ‘Ari Halberstam Memorial Website’).

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