A 32-year-old woman accused of stabbing a rabbi with a syringe in Manhattan’s Diamond District was arrested Saturday, as police said she had allegedly attacked another Jewish man just hours earlier.
Anna Mochalova faces multiple charges, including assault as a hate crime, in connection with the alleged attack on Yosef, a 26-year-old rabbi. Police said she followed him and jabbed him in the back with a needle near West 47th Street and Fifth Avenue at about 6 p.m. last week.
About two hours before that incident, Mochalova allegedly bumped into a 37-year-old Jewish man on West 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue, according to police.
When the man confronted her, she spoke to him in Russian before stabbing him in the arm with a sharp object, police said.
The NYPD’s Hate Crimes Task Force is investigating both incidents as antisemitic attacks, according to authorities.
Video shared on X by Manhattan Shomrim appears to show the suspected attacker following Yosef—who was dressed in traditional Orthodox Jewish clothing—around a parked car as he tried to get away moments before the stabbing.
Yosef told The Post that he believes he was targeted because he is “visibly Jewish.”
“I never met that person before,” he said. “She passes by other people. I’m visibly Jewish.”
Yosef, who asked that his last name not be published, was in the Diamond District conducting regular street outreach to Jewish men when he was attacked.
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Although he has traveled throughout the country, he said it was the first time he had personally experienced antisemitism.
“I never experienced antisemitism anywhere in America on a personal level,” he said.
The assault did not stop him from continuing his work. He returned to the area the following day to help Jewish men put on tefillin, small black leather boxes containing verses from the Torah.
Yosef said the resilience of his grandparents, who survived the Holocaust, continues to inspire him.
“They went on to build a Jewish home after the Holocaust,” he said. “If they could survive, I must go back to spread the light.”
The alleged hate crimes occurred weeks after the NYPD reported that hate-crime complaints had risen by nearly 13% during the first nine months of the year compared with the same period a year earlier. Anti-Jewish incidents accounted for more than half of those cases.
Mochalova, who is from Brooklyn, was charged with assault, assault as a hate crime, menacing, aggravated harassment and criminal possession of a weapon.
She was awaiting arraignment Sunday in Manhattan Criminal Court.