D.C. Rabbi Attacked By Lyft Driver Who Didn’t Like His ‘Energy’

A prominent young Washington rabbi says he was in a cab home from Shacharis Sunday when he was kicked out of the car and violently attacked by the driver.

“He was not able to give any reason other than ‘my energy,’” Menachem Shemtov, the 29-year-old leader of Chabad Georgetown, said in an interview Sunday afternoon as he headed to an urgent care facility to treat the cuts on his face.

Shemtov said the Lyft driver demanded he leave the car. Videos of the incident, taken by both Shemtov and witnesses, show the driver punching and hitting the rabbi with a set of keys. The attacker fled the scene, according to a police report, which described his vehicle as a red Toyota sedan bearing the Maryland license plate 3FR1602.

The car was the one Shemtov ordered, but he said he believes the man who assaulted him was not the person who was supposed to pick him up. After the incident, he looked at the Lyft app again and saw that the driver who agreed to take him home looked significantly older than his attacker.

Shemtov said he called the Lyft from a Chabad center in Adams Morgan to his home in Georgetown about 10:15 a.m. He asked whether the music in the car could be a little less loud, and the driver turned it off.

“He made a passive-aggressive comment about how I should book a quiet car next time,” Shemtov said. “Then 20 seconds later, he said, ‘Get out of my car.’” When Shemtov asked why, he said the driver replied, “I don’t like your energy, your energy is kind of offending me.”

After Shemtov got out, video shows the driver following him on foot and yelling at him for slamming the car door. He then punched Shemtov in the face. When the rabbi moved to take pictures of the car, the driver followed him and slapped him repeatedly with his keys, leaving cuts across Shemtov’s face.

“I didn’t engage back with him; I didn’t fight,” Shemtov said. “This is the most aggressive thing to happen to me.”

Lyft did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Shemtov’s family has played a major role in Washington Jewish life for three generations. His grandfather organized the first lighting of a National Menorah on the Ellipse in 1979. His father convinced the House of Representatives to stop holding votes during the High Holidays in 1998, and former president Donald Trump’s daughter and son-in-law attended his home shul. Shemtov leads prayers at the Pentagon.

They are part of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, which stands apart from other deeply observant sects in its outreach to more secular Jews. Shemtov said he didn’t know whether the “energy” the driver referred to included his religious garb; a police report said the incident was not being investigated as a hate crime.

“I don’t know what other energy he could be referring to,” Shemtov said. “I don’t know what to attribute to me other than who I am.”

(c) 2024 , The Washington Post · Rachel Weiner