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| Rabbi Gary Moskowitz with his students |
Young Jewish boys are studying karate so they could protect themselves from the thugs in the streets of Brooklyn, New York.
In recent weeks, tugs have targeted elderly Jewish grandmas and young Jewish kids with the evil “Knockout Game.”
A man, who was himself bullied when he grew up in the Bronx, is teaching Jewish boys how to defend themselves.
Rabbi Gary Moskowitz, 56, is a hero to young boys as he went from being bullied to becoming a police officer and then a rabbi.
Moskowitz wants to toughen up the Jews of Brooklyn, who are being targeted in the “Knockout Game.”
"If Jewish children begin to fight back they will not be bothered so much," Moskowitz, a seventh-degree karate black belt said. "I'm just trying to encourage the Jewish community to do just that," he said.
In the past two months, at least eight Jews, all in Brooklyn, have been attacked by punks playing the "Knockout Game,” in which people are sucker punched.
As one of the few Jewish children living in the Soundview section of the Bronx in the 1960s, Moskowitz took a lot of punches.
"I wore a kippah, and I was a target," he said. "Once, I was dragged up to a 6-story rooftop by a gang where they held me over the ledge," Moskowitz said.
However, it all changed at age 14 when he attended a summer camp sponsored by the Jewish Defense League, which taught karate.
Soon after camp, he met one of the bullies, who had in the past beaten him and urinated on his yarmulke.
This time however, when the bully tried to start up with him, he found his match and was brought down to the ground.
Now, as an Orthodox Jewish rabbi he teaches self defense in Flushing.