NEW YORK — A New Jersey man was sentenced Wednesday to six months and one week behind bars for crashing his car into the world headquarters of Chabad Lubavitch, the Jewish institution in New York where his lawyer said he was trying to gain acceptance while struggling with psychological problems.

Dan Sohail, 36, was sentenced in federal court in Brooklyn by a judge who rejected a recommendation by prosecutors to force Sohail to remain behind bars for another eight months. The sentence paves the way for the New Jersey man, who has already spent six months in custody, to be released in about a week.

Prosecutors had called for a harsher sentence as a broader warning to those who might attack Jewish interests amid a dramatic rise in hate crimes against the Jewish population.

Judge Eric N. Vitaliano said he was “a little saddened” to see that the Justice Department wanted its sentencing to influence an initial erroneous impression among the general public that the Jan. 28 attack was a hate crime.

No one was injured when Sohail drove his car into the side entrance of the Chabad headquarters five times, ripping the door off its hinges and destroying the front bumper of his car. Before driving to the building, he turned away passers-by, a fact the judge mentioned at sentencing when he ordered him to pay $20,000 restitution.

The complex at 770 Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn includes a synagogue and offices, and was packed with people at the time, authorities said.

In their pre-sentence arguments, prosecutors noted that “a staggering” 80 of 146 hate crime incidents in New York City since the beginning of the year involved crimes against Jews and Jewish institutions.

Vitaliano said the government’s argument for a harsh sentence to send a deterrent message to the general public was based in part on the fact that the attack was initially presented as a “Jewish hate crime or, worse, an act of terrorism crime.”

But he noted that federal prosecutors eventually charged the Carteret, New Jersey, man with intentionally damaging religious property, and Sohail pleaded guilty in mid-May.

The judge cited a psychiatric report he reviewed and said Sohail’s mental health issues “played a significant role” in his decision-making.

“This is a sad story,” Vitaliano said.

Defense attorney Mia Eisner-Grynberg told the judge in court papers before sentencing that Sohail was struggling with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder after a traumatizing childhood when he carried out the attack, even as he “desperately sought belonging and understanding through his exploration of Judaism.”

He said Sohail attended the Chabad he eventually attacked and “found the rabbinic students there warm and welcoming.”

Eisner Grynberg said Sohail “danced with them” and followed their instructions to visit Israel, but became erratic and extremely anxious after returning to the United States and was “begging” Chabad members to help him.

Driving the car toward the building, he said, was “an irrational cry for help.”

Sohail did not speak during the sentencing, but thanked the judge at the end of the proceedings.

The accident occurred on the 75th anniversary of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson becoming leader of the Lubavitch movement and caused immediate concern in the city. Schneerson died in 1994, but remains a globally revered figure. There has been a near-constant police presence around the Chabad Lubavitch world headquarters for years.

The site was at the epicenter of the Crown Heights riots in 1991, when the neighborhood’s black residents attacked Jews after a child was hit and killed by a car traveling in Schneerson’s motorcade. In 2014, a disturbed man entered the synagogue and stabbed a rabbinic student, wounding him, before being shot dead by police.