Fires In The Mirror

The interview takes place on the afternoon of November 12, 1991, at a church rectory office. The reverend says that the accident wouldn’t have happened if the driver was observing the speed limit, and that people knew it was the Grand Rebbe, whose life the Lubavitchers fear for because the Satmars have threatened to kill him: “So whenever he comes out / he’s got to be whisked” (75). The reverend says that he should have his own guards, like the Pope, not police. He says the Rebbe used to walk in a procession that would stop everything, always protected, but now he drives everywhere. The Rebbe goes to the cemetery every week to visit his dead wife, and the police escort him at 70 mph. The police escort goes through the green light, the Rebbe’s Cadillac goes through the amber, and the bodyguard van deliberately ran a red, hitting another car and then going onto the sidewalk: “they were more concerned about licking their own / wounds. / Rather than pick the car off the boy” (77). The boy died, and the rioting started as a result of anger: “There’s a Mexican standoff right now / But it’s gonna happen again” (77).

Smith originally intended to interview Kym, a young woman at an apartment recreation room in the Spring, but two young men came up and started talking. This man is more vocal than his friend, Anonymous Young Man #2, and another young man sits in silence as they talk.Young Man #1 says that Angela was helping teach Gavin how to ride a bike, running on the side and pushing him. Everyone watches the car run the stoplight, laughing about how the Lubavitchers never get pulled over, and then they see the car hit another car, and swerve towards the street. They start running over, and Young Man #1 tells his friends to grab Yosef because he’s drunk and he doesn’t want him to escape. #1 asks the other passengers if an ambulance is coming, and they assure him it is, although he is suspicious. #1 mocks Yosef, saying he was complaining about being hurt even though he was fine, and the interviewee says that they didn’t beat him up but that his scratches were from the accident.

An ambulance comes, and they realize it’s not a city ambulance, and the interviewee starts yelling, which makes the neighborhood come outside. Yosef gets into the ambulance and there’s nothing they can do to stop him but “I was breakin’ fool, man, / I was gon’ mad” (83). Later, #1 gets arrested for instigating. He says that there has never been justice.

The interview takes place in a Manhattan office as Miller drinks coffee, wearing a yarmulke. Miller speaks about being at Gavin’s funeral and the amount of support the Lubavitcher community showed. At Gavin’s funeral, he is “not aware of a— / and I was taking notes— / of a word that was uttered / of comfort to the family of Yankel Rosenbaum. / Frankly this was a political rally rather than a funeral” (85). However, he says there were many anti-Semitic comments, despite Hitler’s dislike of black people. Miller says he couldn’t believe the boundlessness of anti-Judaism. He says that preferential treatment is no excuse for the violence directed at the Jewish community, especially due to the relative passivity of the Lubavitchers. 

The interview takes place at a Manhattan restaurant in late November, 1991, while a neatly dressed Rice drinks Miller Lite: “I didn’t participate in any of the violence / because basically I have a lot to lose” (88). He says that he was talking to the kids about the power of numbers when Green asked him to help. The next day, Rice notes that the cops rush the black crowd but “didn’t rush into the Jewish crowd” (91). Green asks Rice to drive around in his van with him to keep the kids off the street and avoid future violence. They tell kids to stop running from the police because the police won’t hit them, but a “cop grabs my megaphone hits me in the head with a stick” (92) and puts Rice in a police car. Rice protests, and eventually Green explains to the officer what is going on and they free him. Youth start throwing bottles at the police, who tell everyone to leave. The next day, there is more violence, and people do not understand why black people are angry. 

This is taken from a speech at a Lubavitcher rally, not from an interview. Rosenbaum speaks about his brother being killed because he was a Jew, and how his brother represents every American: “When my brother was stabbed four times, / each and every American was stabbed four times” (94). He says that his brother’s death was America’s fault, labeling his attackers as gutless. He calls on the police to arrest others, telling political leaders he is not going home until there is justice. 

Smith interviews a smiling Rosenbaum as he waits for his airplane at Newark Airport. Rosenbaum speaks about the time difference of sixteen hours between New York and Melbourne, how he got a call from his wife telling him it was an emergency. He remembers being worried about everyone—his kids, his parents, his grandmother—except his brother, who he never thought would have tragedy befall him. He gets home and his friend tells him there is a problem and to sit down, and then explains what happened. Rosenbaum remembers being shocked: “I mean the fact that my brother / could be attacked / or die, / it just hadn’t even entered my mind” (98). Rosenbaum asks for the details, repeatedly asking if his friend is sure.

The interview takes place in the same recreation room with Anonymous Young Man #1, but #2 is more soft-spoken, and with a more direct gaze. Young Man #2 says that Nelson couldn’t have stabbed Rosenbaum because Nelson was an athlete and not interested in doing bad things, only interested in athletics: “A bad boy, / somebody who’s groomed in badness, / or did badness / before, / stabbed the man” (101). Young Man #2 knows this because he used to be an athlete and a bad boy, and when he was an athlete he wouldn’t have done anything to jeopardize his career, but when he became a bad boy he wasn’t an athlete any more. #2 says that there are two things to do in Crown Heights: either make music, or sell drugs and rob people: “I know for a fact that that youth, that sixteen-year-old, / didn’t kill that Jew. / That’s between me and my Creator” (102).

The interview takes place at a fancy restaurant in Brooklyn, and Carson reprimands his bodyguard for being late. He speaks of the tensions waiting to erupt in Crown Heights and across America: “The Jews come second to the police / when it comes to feelings of dislike among Black folks” (103). He talks about the police as an occupying force, and how the media paints him as a villain. He says he’s a good guy to pick on because he understands youth language, especially how they can’t engage in a dialogue and prefer brevity. He is amazed at how arrogant people are denying that they are being afforded preferential treatment. He says he doesn’t want their help, likening them to a bear: “I’m not gonna advocate any coming together and healing of / America / and all that shit” (105). He says his life is unstable and his future is uncertain. He has an idea for a film that he got watching high school kids in a football stadium rapping. He says it is a new sound that white people don’t understand. He speaks about the beauty of West Side Story and how the answer to the problems of society should lie in a musical.

The interview takes place on a spring morning while the rabbi wears traditional Hasidic clothing. The rabbi speaks about understanding religion and respecting other people, saying that you can’t only respect other people based on your knowledge of them. He talks of how the Rebbe was speaking to the Mayor, explaining that they cannot eat at a non-kosher house, even using the ovens or the dishes. The rabbi says to the Mayor that he can’t get caught up in the differences: “you have to look at it as one city / and one / human race. / We are all New Yorkers” (111). He says he doesn’t agree with the idea of preferential treatment because the government gave the Rebbe a police car simply because he needed one, not because of who he was. He says that no matter what religion you are, if there are 5,000 people leaving a religious place at one time they should have a police car. 

This section is a continuation of the same interview. Sharpton talks about the legal battles they have had to overcome after the DA came back with no indictment. The judge gives Sharpton three days to serve Lifsh, and Sharpton questions why Lifsh ran away to Israel if he was innocent. The reverend goes to Israel and serves the American embassy, but Lifsh never comes to receive service, so the judge allows Sharpton to sue the rabbi: “We wanted to show the world / one, this man ran / and was allowed to run, and two, we wanted to be able to legally go / around him, / to sue the people he was working for so that we can bring them into / court and establish why and what happened” (114–115). The reverend speaks to the double standard both in terms of justice and in the media’s distortion of events. The media blames Sharpton for inciting people to stab Rosenbaum, but Rosenbaum died before Sharpton came to New York. He says the media is distorting the truth to protect the Lubavitchers and not questioning why Lifsh ran away. He says that the Rebbe should not have let Lifsh leave and should have given his condolences to the Cato family, which he has yet to do: “And he’s supposed to be a religious leader. / So it’s treating us with absolute contempt / and I don’t care how controversial it makes us. / I won’t tolerate being insulted. / If you piss in my face I’m gonna call it piss. / I’m not gonna call it rain” (116).

The interview takes place in the afternoon in a big red van. Green is wearing a knit hat over his dreadlocks and has a driver. Green talks about how the media gave power to Sharpton, Carson, and Daugherty but they couldn’t control youth rage: “Those young people had rage out there, / that didn’t matter who was in control of that— / that rage had to get out” (117). He says that the rage exists every day and can be seen on the streets in dead bodies. Green says that the mayor was being accused of preferential treatment towards blacks for not turning the cops on them, but Green says that if the cops had tried to confront black youth in the street, they’d still be in the middle of a battle: “I pray on both sides of the fence, / and I tell the people in the Jewish community the same thing, / ‘This is not something that force will hold’” (118). Green speaks about young black children with no weapons running at cops simply because their anger has to have an outlet, and he says that the anger can be directed at anyone, even himself or Smith, because the children have no guiding role models. He says most of them don’t even know who Hitler is, so they don’t know what it means to say Heil Hitler. Green picks up his phone and talks about the colors on a mural, then hangs up. Green says that they also don’t know who Frederick Douglass or many other famous black activists are, but they know Malcolm X “because the system had given ‘em / Malcolm is convenient” (121).

The interview takes place on a spring afternoon in the well-equipped kitchen of a large, beautiful house. Malamud talks about not being able to leave her house in August because of police barricades. She wishes she could go on television and scream at the world. She said that none of her neighbors were rioting; it was all out-of-towners. Although she admits, “I don’t love my neighbors. / I don’t know my Black neighbors” (123), she assumes that they want the same things she wants, such as a nice home and to send their kids to college. She says Sharpton brought kids without summertime jobs here to riot. She talks about an interview with a black girl who says that these boys will get you pregnant without knowing you. She explains that if you have nothing else to do, rioting seems like a good idea. She blames the police for not stopping it the first night.

She talks about how Rosenbaum’s parents were Holocaust survivors: “He didn’t have to die” (125). She says that nobody—no matter their race—besides Jeffrey Dahmer would willingly drive a van into a 7-year-old boy and kill him. She says this accident was blown out of proportion, blaming Sharpton and Daugherty, who she says has been to prison, because they make money off rabble-rousing. She says her neighbors were terrified and hiding. She said she had 500 policemen outside her door and couldn’t leave, and she is thankful that her son was in Russia. She says the coup was the same day the riots started, and she was concerned because she hadn’t heard from him: “When I did hear from him I told him to stay in Russia, he’d be safer / there than here. / And he was” (128).

The interview takes place at night in a Crown Heights house’s basement. Ostrov wears a yarmulke and eats popcorn and sliced apples. Ostrov explains that he was working at a hospital as an assistant chaplain and found out that Rosenbaum had an autopsy even though it goes against Jewish law. Ostrov says he found a Jewish man whose mother had jumped off a building to commit suicide because she was terrified and the man didn’t want her to have an autopsy. He says she was an immigrant from Russia who had come to America to escape hardships, but after the rioting started she felt trapped: “everywhere you go there’s Jew haters” (131). He found his mother the next morning on the sidewalk. “After that we already knew this was getting serious, / because we had, / we had Sonny Carson come down / and we had, um, / Reverend Al Sharpton come down / start making pogroms” (131-132).

The interview takes place at night on the corner where the accident occurred, next to an altar for Gavin. Cato remembers Angela trying to move but “Gavin was still” (135). Cato remembers the police hassling him as he tries to explain that Gavin is his child. He remembers everything being very loud and the amount of people and the police not letting him through to see Gavin. He thinks that if Gavin had gotten sick and died, it wouldn’t have hurt him so bad, but the entire week before Gavin’s death, he couldn’t eat: “I was very touchy— / any least thing that drop / or any song I hear / it would effect me… I was / lingering, lingering, lingering, lingering” (137). He knew something was wrong, but he didn’t want to accept it. He thought it was one of his other children, but not Gavin because he never caused any trouble. Cato feels like there is no justice because Jewish people have all the power and are running the show. He says that they were going to throw the case out if he didn’t go to them “with pity” (138) but he didn’t want to say those words to them. He explains that he was born by his foot, which makes him special, so no one can overpower him.