Res ipsa loquitur

This Latin phrase is a doctrine in American and British civil law that translates into "the thing speaks for itself." Roughly speaking (I am not a lawyer), it means that sometimes the facts themselves establish that somebody did not exercise proper care, and no further proof is needed. A news item that recently appeared in the New York Post brought that phrase to mind. Most of us heard about a brutal attack this past Thanksgiving on a 26-year-old male yeshiva teacher by two Gentile punks who knocked him unconscious, ripped off his hat, jacket and skullcap and taunted him with "Jew, Jew." The victim was unable to identify his attackers in court, which probably means they will go free.

According to the Post account, one of the attackers, when asked by a police detective why he targeted Jews, answered "It was something fun to do. . . they don't hit back." Am I experiencing time travel? Am I back in Vienna in the early 1930s when Nazi bullyboys beat up random Jews in the street? My father alav hashalom, an amateur boxer, mixed it up with them; we needed more Jews like him. Or are we back in the familiar neighborhoods of Brooklyn and so many other places in America, before the Six Day War, when young punks picked fights with Jewish boys for lack of anything better to do? Oh, and please don't call these bullies "toughs". If they were tough they would fight willing opponents in dojos and boxing gyms. These goons attacked Jews because they perceived them as weaklings who would not stand up for themselves. And that, Rabbi Meir Kahane taught, is quintessential hillul Hashem.

When I run through that same area in summertime, dressed in my summer getup, muscles pumping, some Hasidim eyeball me as if I was a visitor from outer space but nobody touches a hair of my head. I project an image that says messing with me would not be fun to do, and I'm over twice the age of the teacher who was beaten on Thanksgiving. Something is rotten and it isn't in Denmark. And something has to change. Punks who start fights with Jewish people need to be beaten so badly that they will wish the cops had gotten to them first. Let the word go forth that attacking Jews is bad for your health.

Res ipsa loquitur.