UPPER WEST SIDE — A group of students from a local Jewish day school spent more than $600 at a local Judaica shop last week after an employee fell victim to an anti-Semitic attack at the store.
Sixteen students from Manhattan Day School, an Orthodox Yeshiva on West 75th Street near Riverside Drive, used proceeds from the school's annual Hanukkah Boutique to buy games, stickers, hand puppets, CDs and DVDs from West Side Judaica, a longtime store selling Jewish books and religious items at 2412 Broadway.
The students, boys and girls from the seventh and eighth grades, spent $647 in total at the shop, all of which they will give away to needy children as part of their annual toy drive, they said.
Three days earlier, a man in his 20s yelled anti-Semitic statements and punched 52-year-old store employee Solomon Salczer at the location.
Police are still searching for the suspect and are investigating the incident as a hate crime, they said Monday.
"We need to show people that we care, that as a community when it happens to one of us, it hurts us all," said Dalia Schwalb, a parent at the school who initially proposed the idea.
Schwalb said she knew anti-Semitism all too well from her experiences growing up in Antwerp, Belgium, in the 1980s and 90s.
"'Vuile Jood' was all too common language for us; in Flemish it means dirty Jew," she said.
The visit was timed so that the students could participate in Mincha, the Jewish afternoon prayer, with the store's employees, said a school spokeswoman.
"The staff members at West Side Judaica were moved by how much people care about them. As soon as we arrived, there were smiles on their faces and they were overjoyed to see us," said Emma Kassai, an eighth-grader who went to the store Thursday and described it as a "moving experience."
The school hasn't had any formal connection with the store before, school staff said.
"It was very nice to go out with my friends to help out other Jewish people," added eighth-grader Uriel Fallas. "They were very excited that we came to help them."
An employee from West Side Judaica, who didn't want to give her name but said she known as "mom" by shoppers, said they were happy to see the students.
"We loved the experience," she said, before getting back to customers shopping during the holiday rush Monday.
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