Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of religious discrimination and violence.

The Jersey City Shooting was an antisemitic act of violence that occurred in Jersey City, New Jersey, on December 10, 2019, resulting in the deaths of six individuals, including the attackers. The tragedy began when Jersey City Police Detective Joseph Seals, aged 34, was fatally shot at Bayview Cemetery by perpetrators David Anderson, aged 47, and Francine Graham, his girlfriend, aged 50. 

It remains unclear how Seals first encountered Anderson and Graham, or why the perpetrators shot him. It is believed that he may have been attempting to question them about another crime when he was killed. After fleeing the cemetery, Anderson and Graham drove a stolen U-Haul van to the JC Kosher Supermarket in Greenville, a neighborhood that had recently experienced an influx of new Orthodox Jewish residents. Armed with high-powered rifles, they entered the store and opened fire, killing three civilians: Mindy Ferencz, the owner of the store, Douglas Miguel Rodriguez, an employee and immigrant from Ecuador, and Moshe Deutsch, a customer and yeshiva student. After a lengthy shootout in which two police officers and a customer were injured, both perpetrators were killed by law enforcement.

Investigations revealed that both Anderson and Graham had ties to extremist ideologies. Anderson was linked to the Black Hebrew Israelite movement, a group with factions known for promoting antisemitic rhetoric. A search of their van uncovered a cache of weapons, including a pipe bomb, and writings indicating that the attack was premeditated and specifically targeted the Jewish community. Evidence suggests they planned to target other Jewish targets later in the day.

The attack on the JC Kosher Supermarket reflects a resurgence of antisemitic violence in 21st-century America. The attack followed other notable incidents such as the 2014 Overland Park Jewish Community Center shooting, in which 3 people were killed, the 2018 Pittsburg synagogue shooting at the Tree of Life, in which 11 people were killed, and the 2019 Poway Synagogue shooting, in which 1 person was killed and 3 injured. These events highlighted a pattern of ideologically motivated violence directed at Jewish communities and institutions in the United States.

The violent shooting that occurs in the final chapters of The Life and Crimes of Hoodie Rosen is based on the 2019 Jersey City shooting. As in the book, the shooting happened in a city that had recently experienced an influx of Orthodox Jewish residents. In both instances, one of the two shooters was female, and the perpetrators killed a police officer in a cemetery before moving on to attack the Kosher supermarket. A crucial difference is that, in the Jersey City shooting, only one of the victims was Jewish, despite the perpetrators’ stated goal to attack the Jewish community. In The Life and Crimes of Hoodie Rosen, all of the victims are Jewish. Author Isaac Blum told the Jewish Exponent, a weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, that writers have a “sacred responsibility” to tell the stories of the dead and suggested that his goal was to faithfully represent the trials of the Jewish people in literature.