Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Firefighter Who Tweeted Anti-Semitic Hate Transferred Out Of Orthodox Neighborhood

(JTA) — A newly graduated New York City firefighter who had quit as an EMT after his racist and anti-Semitic tweets came to light was transferred out of a heavily Orthodox Jewish neighborhood of Brooklyn after just one day.

Joseph Cassano, the son of a former fire commissioner, worked Monday at a Borough Park station, but the Jewish community complained, the New York Post reported. State Assemblyman Dov Hikind, who is Orthodox, had called for a demonstration later this week in front of the firehouse, which was canceled after news of the transfer.

“The City and the FDNY did the right thing,” Hikind said, according to the Yeshiva World News. “People who hate Jews should not be trusted to save them from fires. Good luck to the community where he’s re-assigned.”

Cassano was transferred to a firehouse in the Great Kills section of Staten Island.

Cassano, 28, once tweeted “I like Jews about as much as hitler.” He also wrote: “Getting sick of picking up all these Obama lovers and taking them to the hospital because their medicare pays for an ambulance and not a cab.” On Martin Luther King Day in 2013 he tweeted, “MLK could go kick rocks for all I care, but thanks for the time and a half today.”

In 2013, Cassano was allowed to resign after the tweets came to light. He received counseling from Rabbi Steven Burg, then a director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. After the counseling and an apology, he was allowed to return to work as an EMT and apply to become a firefighter.

His father is Sal Cassano, who served as commissioner from January 2010 to June 2014.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.