Welcome back to the Ten Blocks podcast. This is Teddy Kupfer, an associate editor of City Journal.

Joining me on the show today is Elliot Kaufman, the letters editor of the Wall Street Journal.

Elliot wrote a piece for that newspaper on the Crown Heights riots, which happened 30 years ago this past weekend.

Peace ran over the weekend. Today we'll discuss his article, the riots, and their legacy.

Elliot, thank you for joining us.

Thanks for having me on, Teddy.

So, Elliot, neither of us was alive 30 years ago. I will confess that right off the bat.

But you talked to a lot of people who not only were alive back then, but were living in Crown Heights,

and were involved in the events

that unfolded. And the result was a really comprehensive and excellent article that appeared

in the journal's opinion section. Before we dive into what exactly happened on August 19, 1991,

however, I want to talk about the cultural and historical circumstances in the years leading up to

the riots. There's a broad citywide angle here. New York was a different I want to talk about the cultural and historical circumstances in the years leading up to the

riots. There's a broad citywide angle here. New York was a different place in the early 1990s.

There were about 2,200 murders in the city that year, 1991. David Dinkins was the mayor. NYPD

leadership had not yet embarked on the aggressive program of crime control that it pursued under

Rudolph Giuliani. In a city journal article from 2013, Fred Siegel calls Dinkins' response to the riots

paralytic. But then there is also the local color. As you mentioned in your story, many

whites, including Jews, left the neighborhood in the

1970s and 80s as crime crested.

But the Lubavich community stuck around.

I was reading an article for Habbat.org by David Margolin, and he asked the question,

...