The Agudath Israel's Damage To Jews Worldwide Is Immeasurable - “Moreover, the right to practice religion freely does not include liberty to expose the community… to communicable disease.”

 

In their lawsuit, rabbis, leaders of synagogues and the national Orthodox Jewish group Agudath Israel had argued that Governor Andrew Cuomo was singling out Jews during the weeklong Sukkot holiday and this weekend’s Simchat Torah holiday, which marks the annual cycle of reading the Torah.

“That targeting of a religious minority on the eve of its holidays is reason enough to reject all of defendant’s arguments and allow plaintiffs to celebrate their holidays this weekend as they have for over 2,000 years,” the groups argued in a Friday court filing.

*

A federal judge refused on Friday to block New York’s plan to temporarily limit the size of religious gatherings in COVID-19 hot spots.

US District Judge Kiyo Matsumoto issued the ruling after an emergency hearing in a lawsuit brought by rabbis and synagogues, arguing the restrictions were unconstitutional. They had sought to have enforcement delayed until at least after the Jewish holidays this weekend.

The rules limit indoor prayer services to 10 people in areas where the virus is spreading fastest. In other areas within hot spots, indoor religious services are capped at 25 people.

*

Ruling from the bench, the judge said the state had an interest in protecting public safety.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo

“And a mass gathering is not less dangerous simply because it is religious in nature,” reads Cuomo’s filing. “Moreover, the right to practice religion freely does not include liberty to expose the community… to communicable disease.”

Torat Hashem Temima

Remember too, that there are lives at stake. We went through hell in March and April — I remember the horrors of that period all too well — and we will not go back. We are prepared to take all necessary steps to stop the spread and save lives.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo

Today, 4:23 PM

 To: Paul Mendlowitz

 

October 7, 2020.

 

Dear Paul,

 

We've seen time and time again throughout this pandemic that mass gatherings can spread this virus and result in clusters which can in turn become community outbreaks. While New York's numbers remain low across the most of the state, the positivity rate in "hot spot" ZIP codes was 5.1 percent yesterday — five times the rate in the rest of the state. We are moving quickly to stop further spread. Yesterday, we announced restrictions that will be enforced in these hot spot ZIP codes for a minimum of 14-days.

 

We know that some of these restrictions will be unpopular and difficult for many people. Still, these actions are far less restrictive than implementing a full shutdown, as some foreign countries and states have had to do following a resurgence of the virus. 

 

Remember too, that there are lives at stake. We went through hell in March and April — I remember the horrors of that period all too well — and we will not go back. We are prepared to take all necessary steps to stop the spread and save lives. 

 

Photo of the Day: I Love NY's Fall Foliage Report shows that leaves are starting to change in New York City and Long Island, while the most of the rest of the state is near, at, or past peak.

 

Here's what else you need to know tonight:

 

1. See the Cluster Action Initiative maps. Yesterday, we announced the implementation of Red, Orange and/or Yellow Zones in and around clusters in Broome County, Brooklyn, Orange County, Queens/Far Rockaway, Upper Queens and Rockland County. Click each county name to see the map for that cluster.  

 

In Red Zones, mass gatherings are prohibited, only essential businesses are open, schools are remote-only and houses of worship are limited to 25 percent capacity (up to 10 people maximum). In Orange Zones, mass gatherings are limited to ten people (indoor and outdoor), high-risk non-essential businesses are closed, schools are remote-only and houses of worship are at 33 percent capacity (up to 25 people maximum). In Yellow Zones, mass gatherings are limited to 25 people (indoor and outdoor), schools are open with increased testing, businesses are open and houses of worship are limited to 50 percent capacity. Read more here. 

 

2. We are carefully watching New York's total COVID hospitalizations. Yesterday, there were 748 total hospitalizations. Of the 108,246 tests reported yesterday, 1,360, or 1.25 percent, were positive. Sadly, we lost eight New Yorkers to the virus. 

 

Ever Upward,

 

Governor Andrew M. Cuomo

 

"Jewish Lives Matter" --- Except when they Don't! -----In a particularly violent episode, one man — the brother of Mordy Getz, a well-known Orthodox businessman who was outspoken about the need for masks and social distancing earlier in the pandemic — was beaten so severely by protesters after he took a video of the scene that he was taken to the hospital.

Orthodox residents of Borough Park burned masks and blocked city buses Tuesday night to protest Gov. Andrew Cuomo's announcement that he would impose new restrictions on areas with upticks in COVID

Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn burn masks during massive protest against New York’s new COVID rules

(JTA) – Protests by Orthodox Jews against New York’s crackdown on gatherings in their neighborhoods turned tense and at times violent Tuesday night as throngs of young men demonstrated in the streets of Borough Park.

The late-night protest in a heavily Orthodox area of Brooklyn took aim at new restrictions that would close schools, limit attendance at synagogues services and close nonessential businesses in areas with upticks in COVID-19. 

The protestors set fire to a pile of masks, at one point surrounded a city bus that was moving through the area and at another ran a reporter out of the area.

In a particularly violent episode, one man — the brother of Mordy Getz, a well-known Orthodox businessman who was outspoken about the need for masks and social distancing earlier in the pandemic — was beaten so severely by protesters after he took a video of the scene that he was taken to the hospital. Onlookers could be heard calling him a “moser,” one who informs on fellow Jews to the authorities and who some Jewish legal authorities say can be killed as a result, an insult applied to his brother back in April, as he was placed on a stretcher to be taken to the hospital.

The protests laid bare the frustration felt by local Orthodox Jews who are now at the center of the first widespread resurgence of COVID in New York since the spring. Many in the community believe that city and state officials are unfairly targeting Orthodox Jews, who are already vulnerable to anti-Semitism, in their pandemic response. Local elected officials and community leaders on Tuesday vowed to resist the latest rules, through litigation and civil disobedience.

“We will not close,” radio host and local celebrity Heshy Tischler proclaimed to cheers from the assembled crowds. Later, he told protestors, “You are my soldiers. We are at war.”

Dov Hikind, the former state Assemblyman who is a leader in the community, said the form the protests took were regrettable.

“I’m ashamed of what happened,” Hikind said. “To raise your hand and touch another person, Jew or non-Jew, to injure someone and have them end up in the hospital, what a tragedy.”

He added, “If there would have been a protest last night organized by community leaders and elected officials where everyone was wearing a mask, then of course there’s no problem. … There’s nothing wrong with expressing yourself.”

The protests came in response to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s announcement Tuesday afternoon of new restrictions on a large swath of Brooklyn that is experiencing an uptick in COVID cases. His announcement followed a similar one by New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who on Sunday, during the Jewish holiday of Sukkot when Orthodox Jews do not use cell phones or computers, said he would move to close schools on Wednesday, pending the governor’s approval. The governor then announced Monday that he would close the schools Tuesday. (Most Orthodox schools are in fact closed this week for Sukkot.)

In a statement Tuesday evening, local Orthodox lawmakers accused New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo of “a duplicitous bait-and-switch.”

“The governor informed Jewish community leaders in a conference call that synagogues in ‘red zones’ would be permitted to operate at 50%, and he requested community cooperation (which he was assured would happen,” they wrote, referencing a call Cuomo held with Orthodox leaders Tuesday before he announced the new restrictions. 

“Outrageously, just hours later, Governor Cuomo announced a draconian return to restrictions that would shutter thousands of New York businesses and limit houses of worship to a maximum capacity of 10 (no matter the maximum capacity of the building).”

A statement from Agudath Israel, an organization representing haredi Orthodox communities, also expressed frustration with the lack of notice given about the restrictions in a call earlier in the day and suggested the new rules might be unconstitutional.

“Governor Cuomo’s surprise mass closure announcement today, and limit of 10 individuals per house of worship in ‘red zones,’ is appalling to all people of religion and good faith,” they said.

They seemed to be considering the possibility of challenging the governor’s new restrictions in court. “Agudath Israel intends to explore all appropriate measures to undo this deeply offensive action,” they said. A federal judge issued an injunction blocking New York State from imposing stricter standards on indoor gatherings at religious services than those imposed on other gathering places, citing religious liberty concerns. Agudath Israel filed an amicus brief in that case.

The protesters in Borough Park were joined Tuesday night by Tischler and their City Council representative, Kalman Yeger, who encouraged the crowd to stand up for religious freedom.

“We are not going to be deprived of the right that we have in America, like everybody else in America, the right to observe our religion,” he said in a video posted to Twitter by local news outlet BoroPark24. “I don’t care who in government thinks that they can stop us, they’re wrong. Let them try.”

Tischler also appeared later Tuesday night in Crown Heights, another heavily Orthodox Brooklyn neighborhood where there are no new restrictions but where de Blasio has identified a slight uptick in COVID test positivity rates. Tischler appeared at a Simchat Beit Hashoevah, a gathering on the holiday of Sukkot that is marked by singing and dancing, and addressed the crowd.

“We have a court order, we won, our schools and shuls are open, we will not close,” he said, seemingly referring to a court injunction over the summer issued by a federal judge that blocked New York State from imposing stricter rules on religious gatherings than in other indoor venues.

“And here’s the deal, I’m filing a new court order, I’m holding Cuomo and the idiot de Blasio in contempt,” he said. “We will civil disobedience…our amendments, our first amendments, our rights, we will not close our shuls Simchas Torah!”

Other videos circulated of protesters chanting, “Jewish lives matter.”

At one point, protesters set fire to a pile of masks in the middle of a street.

https://www.jta.org/2020/10/07/health/orthodox-jews-in-brooklyn-burn-masks-during-massive-protest-against-new-yorks-new-covid-restrictions?utm_source=JTA_Maropost&utm_campaign=JTA_DB&utm_medium=email&mpweb=1161-23464-462090

On Covid and Haredim....

 

Guest post by Professor Shaul Magid
 
On COVID and haredim:This has become a national issue but is one that has persisted from the beginning of the crisis. Of late there has been much written by Modern Orthodox and non-Orthodox Jews about the haredim, how they are behaving and why they are behaving that way. While well-placed, I found a lot did not have a real foundational and experiential understanding of the haredi world. I lived in Boro for almost three years in the late 1970s. It was a long time ago but I think I came to understand and absorb that world and something of that remains.

This is NOT an apologia for the haredim; what is happening is horrible and will damage that community for years. They erred seriously and now are paying the price, as well as bearing responsibility for others. What I am trying to do, however, is understand what evoked this response in this way.

Yssocher Katz posted what I found to be the most thoughtful post on the haredim I have seen. Without apologies he tried to situated a value system in the orbit of behavior and  suggest that while this is a mistake, it comes from a place that is not unreasonable. He dealt mostly with religious practice and in a religious register.

I will offer a more societal, maybe sociological rendering that squares with to Yssocher's remarks.

The haredi community is a much more social community than most of us live in. By social I mean that the collective life is driven by social events, from as small as daily minyan, night seder, to as big as a hasidishe wedding or the rebbe’s table on Sukkos. These events don’t have the same values in our world as in theirs. For them, this is the crux of their “leisure” time, it is largely where people meet outside business or study. I recall being surprised when I entered the haredi world that children were always a part of that social world. The notion of children not being invited to weddings is unheard of. One often finds a family with small children in Boro Park walking home from some simcha at midnight. I recall being back in America and invited to a secular wedding where we were told we could not bring children. It was arresting.

As a result, having all that taken away is different for them than for us. It is wrong not to have done it, but viewing it from our frame of reference misses something crucial: you are taking away their whole social world. Now of course they use Whattapp etc. but more fundamentally, it demanded more of them then us. We were more equipped in part because we are less social.

One can also include that living in close quarters with many children (other high risk communities also share this problem), makes social distancing very challenging. Many of us have spacious and/or comfortable places to live, Netflix, plugged into all manner of technology to keep us connected to the world and our kids out of our hair. Generally, the haredi world doesn’t have that kind of man-made internal entertainment. Many have computers and are increasingly connected to the outside world but the community has an ethos to minimize that as much as possible, especially among the young. Television or Fortnight is not their babysitter.

Of course, one can see, for boys, that yeshiva education is a highly social thing. One doesn’t study regularly alone, or if he does, he does so in a room with 100 other young men. That creates an expectation of sociality that is almost unconscious. Girls, of course, are deprived of that educational experience but their lives are founded on social circles in very close ways.

In any event, even as many leading rabbis came out strongly for masks etc (they did so late, but that is another story) it never was able to filter down to the people perhaps in part because the sacrifices were quite difficult and they did not have the will to recognize they were going to have radically revise their social structure. That may be true for us as well, but not in the same way. Haredim have zoom but many of them never used it before COVID and it is a steep learning curve. This is just to say that the social structure of haredim, at least in American centers, presents certain challenges to them that it doesn’t quite present to us.

They failed. But one can also ask why. Science? Maybe a bit but not really. Most of us don’t know much science either. Its really about authority not science. We trust that authority. For them there are competing authorities that also play a role. They are paying a high price.

There is also remnants of mistrust of the “state” (even though the state protects their right to exist), and the way the community for complicated and fascinating reasons for another time, have become big fans of the state of Israel and in most cases, lean pretty right because their religious beliefs serve as the foundation of their views on the Jewish state. A hasid who will vote for Trump because he is good for Israel could be the grandson and a hasid in Poland who was vehemently anti-Zionist. The grandson could live the same lifestyle, in the same Hasidic court. The one big difference is that the grandson will be pro-Israel (albeit not a Zionist).

In this way they fell for Trump, saw in him someone they could lean on, they are people who can be taken by a certain kind of strength. Hasidism often liked strong leaders. Hillel Zeitlin writes about the admiration of Czar Nicholas and Rasputin. In any case, they were convinced that liberal was bad for them. This has its own history in Europe when it was communism.

The haredim will have to comes to terms with this. And they will do it. And yes, tragically more people will likely die first. That community has been devastated from this disease much more than upper-class Jews in the suburbs or “uptown.” Theirs more resembles poorer neighbors with diverse populations. So they don’t need to hear from us how many people died. They know. I think we can help, perhaps, by understanding their challenges in context; a world that seems very much like ours, and in some ways is, but is also very different is ways that have made this moment history difficult, and tragic.

Hag sukkos samaech

Shaul Magid is the Distinguished Fellow in Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College. From 2004-2018 he was a professor of religious studies and the Jay and Jeannie Schottenstein Chair of Jewish Studies in Modern Judaism at Indiana University

The "Energizer" Fake Jews.....They Keep Killing & Killing & Killling - Themselves!

Police, mourners clash as thousands crowd funeral of rabbi who died of COVID

Cops say procession for Pittsburgh Rebbe Mordechai Leifer was approved — but for far fewer numbers

Screen capture from video of the funeral of Rabbi Mordechai Leifer, known as the Pittsburgh Rebbe, who died of the coronavirus and was buried in Ashdod, October 5, 2020

 

Thousands of people gathered Monday at a funeral in Ashdod for a Hasidic rabbi who died overnight after contracting COVID-19, despite a national lockdown aimed at curbing infections that forbids such gatherings.

The ceremony ended with clashes between mourners and police seeking to disperse the crowds.

Video from the funeral showed that although most participants were wearing face masks, they were not keeping to required social distancing.

The Pittsburgh Rebbe, Rabbi Mordechai Leifer, 64, died overnight after a two-month battle with the virus. His title stems from the Hasidic dynasty founded in the US steel town some 100 years ago, and which today is centered in Ashdod.

He was buried in Ashdod, areas of which have been declared virus hotspots due to high infection rates.

Police said in a statement that the funeral procession had been approved in smaller numbers, and that attendees were expected to keep distance between each other and wear masks.

Police had permitted around 300-400 to take part in the event but estimates put the number of people who actually turned up at around 5,000, Channel 12 reported. According to the network, angry confrontations developed between police and participants.

Channel 12 said the overcrowding led eulogies for Leifer to be cut short.

Kan news published a video showing policemen in the midst of the massive crowd, making efforts to tell people to keep their distance from each other.

Opposition lawmaker Avigdor Liberman, who leads Yisrael Beytenu party, blamed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s policies for the scenes, writing on Facebook that “the images we are seeing are a spit in the face of the entire country.”

“The ultra-Orthodox sector is trying to reach herd immunity because of surrender by Bibi and [Gantz] to the Orthodox parties,” he wrote, using a nickname for Netanyahu. “No leadership, no budget, no decisions, no policy, no enforcement.”

Criticism of the ultra-Orthodox community has been growing in recent days, with reports showing that a significant number have been disregarding lockdown restrictions during the Sukkot holiday, including by continuing to host mass gatherings.

As police have stepped up enforcement, there has also been increasing anger within the ultra-Orthodox community and accusations of disproportionate force, including against children.

Sunday saw violent clashes between police and ultra-Orthodox in Jerusalem and in Bnei Brak, where 13 people were arrested as officers broke up mass gatherings for the holiday. Besides violating the restrictions on gatherings in enclosed spaces, police said most worshipers were not wearing masks or adhering to social distancing rules. After cops started handing out fines, the worshipers “began resisting and disturbing public order,” according to police.

The ultra-Orthodox community has seen high coronavirus infection rates, with an assessment last week finding that the rate of infection in the community is 2.5 times that of the national average. The country’s coronavirus czar Ronni Gamzu said last week that 40 percent of recent virus cases were in the ultra-Orthodox community, which constitutes some 12% of the population.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/spurning-lockdown-thousands-gather-for-funeral-of-rabbi-who-died-of-coronavirus/?utm_source=The+Daily+Edition&utm_campaign=daily-edition-2020-10-05&utm_medium=email

When You're Dumb Enough To Bring A Frivolous Lawsuit Against A Powerful Governor - Your Community Pays A Steep Price In Many Ways!

NYC Imposes Additional Requirements on Private Schools in Predominantly Jewish Neighborhoods in Queens and Brooklyn

 

But the City did not impose restrictions on similarly situated, non-Jewish neighborhoods in the Bronx, Manhattan, and Staten Island

Last week, on the eve of Yom Kippur, I blogged about New York City's plans to impose heightened restrictions on Jewish neighborhoods in New York.

Yesterday, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, flagged the "20 hotspot Zip Codes" with positive cases (Kings County is Brooklyn).

Yesterday, the New York City Commission of Health and Mental Hygiene imposed a series of new restrictions on eight of these zip codes in Brooklyn and Queens. I will list the positivity rate in each zip code, as well as the number of positive tests.

1. Borough Park neighborhood of Brooklyn: 11219 (5%, 12) and 11204 (6%, 13).
2. Midwood neighborhood of Brooklyn: 11210 (4%, 7) and 11230 (8%, 29).
3. Gravesend neighborhood of Brooklyn: 11223 (4%, 11).
4. Sheepshead Bay neighborhood of Brooklyn: 11229 (4%, 11)
5. Kew Gardens neighborhood of Queens: 11415 (this zip code is not listed on Governor Cuomo's tweet)
6. Far Rockaway neighborhood of Queens: 11691 (3%, 7)

All of these zip codes are in predominantly Jewish neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens.

The Commissioner did not impose restrictions on six neighborhoods in New York that had comparable positivity rates and positive tests:

1. The Marine Basin neighborhood in Brooklyn: 11234 (4%, 10).
2. Two neighborhoods in the Bronx: 10465 (4%, 5) and 10462 (3%, 7).
3. The Inwood neighborhood of Manhattan: 10040 (4%, 7).
4. Two neighborhoods in Staten Island: 10306 (3%, 5) and 10304 (3%, 6). (I grew up very close to these zip codes).

These neighborhoods are not predominantly Jewish.

The restrictions on private schools in this area are very onerous.

All non-public schools in the affected zip codes must comply with the following additional requirements:

• All individuals on the school premises must remain at least 6 feet apart at all times, except: in emergencies or when doing so would create a safety hazard; or when physical barriers are put in place between individuals in accordance with New York State guidance for in-person instruction at pre-k to Grade 12 schools during the COVID-19 public health emergency; and
• Face coverings are required in school buildings at al times, except for individuals who cannot wear a face covering because of developmental, medical or age reasons;
• Coordinating with the Department and the Test + Trace Corps to identify, isolate and prevent the spread of COVID-19; and
• Following the protocols established by the Department for opening and closing classrooms and schools if a student or staff is confirmed with COVID-19, and excluding students and staff who have symptoms or are confirmed with COVID-19 or have been identified as a close contact to someone with COVID-19.

Students, teachers and staff having close contact with confirmed cases of COVID-19 must quarantine for 14 days from such contact, in accordance with the New York State Department of Health's guidelines for precautionary quarantine.

This order shall be effective immediately and remain in effect through the end of the 2020-2021 school year, including any summer school sessions during 2021, or such earlier time as I may indicate….

An attorney in New York told me that if read literally, it is impossible to comply with these rules.

Get the TROs ready.

https://reason.com/2020/10/01/nyc-imposes-additional-requirements-on-private-schools-in-predominantly-jewish-neighborhoods-in-queens-and-brooklyn/

Spike in Lakewood's Orthodox Jewish Hood bigger than those in NYC’s

New Jersey’s Fastest-Growing Slum Hits 27% Virus Positivity Rate Spike in Orthodox Jewish ghetto bigger than those in NYC’s Testing doubles as statewide rate hits highest since July

• 

New Jersey’s fastest-growing town hit 27% positivity among those tested for the novel coronavirus while the state’s overall rate reached its highest since July.

 

 The statewide figure of 3% is highest since July 17, state officials said at a Trenton news conference. Ocean County’s 5.4% positivity rate leads among the Garden State’s 21 counties, and Lakewood is the biggest worry among its towns. A majority of Lakewood’s population of about 100,000 residents is Orthodox Jewish, like New York City communities where cases also are booming. Many of the faith follow a tradition of big families, and state officials are concerned that close contact during Yom Kippur and other holidays may have worsened the spread of the virus. Ocean County has led New Jersey’s new-case count for two weeks. Outdoor bars have been cited for not enforcing distancing orders and law enforcement on Sept. 14 broke up hundreds of people partying outside MTV’s “Jersey Shore” house in Seaside Heights.

 Most positives are in Lakewood, which Governor Phil Murphy called the state’s fastest-growing town. In recent days, the township has doubled daily testing to 1,000. “We need to step that up,” said Judith Persichilli, the state health commissioner. In New York City as of Tuesday, nine zip codes, all with prominent Orthodox Jewish populations, accounted for 25% of cases over two weeks, according to Mayor Bill de Blasio. In New Jersey, Murphy said he would talk about other virus-fighting strategies for Lakewood later this week. So far, his administration is assigning more contact tracers to warn of potential exposure and working with community and religious leaders to request strict compliance with distancing and masking orders.

  Meanwhile, the state reported 43 coronavirus cases linked to 11 schools. The schools outbreaks, defined as two or more cases, have occurred among students and staff. New Jersey is about a month into its school year, but some cases were traced to August, when school employees started to come together for lesson plans and other tasks. New Jersey has so far reported 16,122 deaths with a lab-confirmed or probable coronavirus link.  

 

Bloomberg/UOJ News

The Orthodox Jewish Community Ganged Up On The Governor By Suing Him Because He Wanted To Protect You From Yourself - He Knows You Are Careless And Reckless ---- Don't Expect Sympathy!

Governor Andrew Cuomo announced on Tuesday that he plans to meet with Orthodox Jewish leaders to address the clusters of COVID-19 in their communities “downstate.”

“I’m going to be meeting with religious leaders of the Orthodox community and local officials,” Cuomo told reporters. “If you look at those clusters and you look at those zip codes, you will see there’s an overlap with large Orthodox Jewish communities. That is a fact. I will be meeting with them to talk about it.”

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---

“This is a public health concern for their community,” the governor stressed, adding, “It’s also a public health concern for surrounding communities. I’ve said from day one, these public health rules apply to every religion, atheists – it just applies to every citizen of the State of New York, period.”

According to Governor Cuomo, “We have seen hotspots before, but this is probably the largest cluster that we have addressed before, and the clusters are Brooklyn, Orange, Rockland. The activity in the cluster is very different than what’s going on in the rest of the state. That’s actually good news in some ways because you have effectively identified the genesis of the potential growth of the virus. Once you have the information, you aggressively target these clusters. These are embers that are starting to catch fire in dry grass. Send all the firefighting equipment and personnel to those embers and stamp out the embers right away. That’s what this data does. Local governments are the first line of defense and they must respond. Competent government must do compliance and enforcement. A cluster today can be community spread tomorrow.”

According to the NY Daily News, NY State’s worst “cluster” is in the mostly-Satmar town of Kiryas Joel in Orange County, where 19% of the tests Monday came back positive. Two other areas, in Rockland County, had 10% and 9% rates. In some Brooklyn and Queens neighborhoods, the rates are around 5%.

NYC Mayor de Blasio on Tuesday cited the clusters of coronavirus in Brooklyn and Queens and vowed that the city will enforce the strict wearing of masks and other steps in those hot spots, which include Gravesend/Homecrest, Midwood, Kew Gardens, Edgemere/Far Rockaway, Borough Park, Bensonhurst/Mapleton, Gerritsen Beach/Homecrest/Sheepshead Bay, and Flatlands/Midwood.

According to the Daily News, the outbreaks in Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods, as well as other parts of Brooklyn and Queens, have by now pushed NY City’s infection rate to 3.25%, after months of successfully keeping the rate at around 1%.

“This is an inflection point,” Mayor de Blasio said. “We have to take more action at this point and more serious action and we will be escalating with each day depending on what we see happening on the ground.”

The Governor noted that 20 hotspot ZIP codes on Monday reported a 5% positive rate. Areas that have high positive rates will be subject to focused testing efforts including access to rapid testing machines. These ZIP codes include:

REGION	COUNTY	ZIP	% POSITIVE	TESTS	POSITIVES
Mid-Hudson	Orange	10950	18%	211	39
Mid-Hudson	Rockland	10952	10%	154	15
Mid-Hudson	Rockland	10977	8%	330	27
NYC	Kings	11223	7%	347	24
NYC	Queens	11374	5%	151	8
NYC	Queens	11691	4%	608	27
Southern Tier	Broome	13760	4%	163	7
NYC	Kings	11229	4%	299	12
NYC	Kings	11235	4%	366	14
NYC	Kings	11219	4%	455	17
NYC	Kings	11211	4%	329	12
NYC	Kings	11230	4%	482	17
NYC	Kings	11204	3%	272	9
NYC	Kings	11218	3%	417	13
Mid-Hudson	Westchester	10801	3%	137	4
NYC	Richmond	10301	3%	208	6
NYC	Kings	11210	3%	248	7
NYC	Richmond	10306	3%	359	10
NYC	Queens	11432	3%	223	6
NYC	Queens	11370	3%	115	3

https://www.jewishpress.com/news/us-news/ny/cuomo-to-meet-orthodox-leaders-on-rapid-spread-of-corona-in-their-communities/2020/09/30/

The past week’s uptick in infections, including in neighborhoods with Haredi and Hasidic populations in New York City and its suburbs, brought attention to the Orthodox community’s response to COVID-19. This recent increase needs to be taken seriously. Our communal behavior has to match our communal prayer.

 

AGUDAH TO NYC: TREAT US WITH RESPECT

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"Will You Shut Up, Man"

Jews across the world observed Yom Kippur. It was a day filled with prayer, introspection and commitment to improve. On more than a half-dozen occasions, we asked God to suppress plague and disease. These entreaties took on an added resonance this year, with the plague of COVID-19 having already taken the lives of more than 200,000 Americans. The fervor of our prayers was deepened by our ability to picture relatives, friends, neighbors and colleagues who have been felled by this dreaded virus. Anyone who ministers to a congregation knows that too often there is a disconnect between what we pray for and our behavior. We sincerely seek the end of the virus, but we are not yet doing all that we can to make that happen. The past week’s uptick in infections, including in neighborhoods with Haredi and Hasidic populations in New York City and its suburbs, brought attention to the Orthodox community’s response to COVID-19. This recent increase needs to be taken seriously. Our communal behavior has to match our communal prayer. Dr. Anthony Fauci and other public health experts have pointed to wearing a mask as the single most important step one can take to prevent the spread of the virus. There is no reason that mask compliance in the Orthodox community shouldn’t mirror that seen elsewhere across New York. As with many other matters contemplated on Yom Kippur, we must acknowledge that we need to do better and that we need to do more. We must commit to doing better and doing more. For our own health, and for the continued good health of all those we come into contact with, including our rabbis, teachers, parents and grandparents. New York’s public health officials also need to reflect on their approach. Shaming is not a legitimate or effective tool. No other community is singled out and stereotyped as the Orthodox are. That too needs to change. Understanding the roots of the complacency that has crept into the community is not the same as justifying it. It is a necessary step toward remedying it. This summer saw day camps and daycare centers running without incident. When overnight camps were banned in New York State, many safely moved their operations to neighboring states. Synagogues resumed services. All this may have led to a false sense of security about a potential second wave. But instead of communication, the city’s Department of Health countered with criticism. Fauci also offers a model of how public health officials should act during a pandemic. Engagement and building trust is what is necessary and what works. There is also lingering distrust because of the different way the city treated the several hundred Hasidic mourners at an outdoor funeral at the very end of April and the far larger crowds righteously protesting the horrific murder of George Floyd a month later. The Hasidim were singled out for harsh criticism by Mayor de Blasio, who called their attendance “absolutely unacceptable.” Those protesting racial injustice were accommodated and encouraged. The point is not to compare the two issues but to highlight why the Hasidic community remains skeptical about whether the city takes their devotion to religious worship, education and ritual as seriously as it takes the priorities of other communities. It also rankles that while the funeral attended by several hundred Hasidim received national attention, little or nothing was written about the funeral of a far better known rabbi, Yaakov Perlow, who died exactly three weeks earlier. He was the head of the Agudath Israel movement, and the school and synagogue he led had thousands of current and former students and worshippers. His funeral was conducted entirely online, and his burial was attended by only a handful of masked and socially distanced immediate family members. Ignoring this funeral while highlighting another creates a distorted view of our community’s conduct and leadership. Here’s one suggestion for a path forward: The city should work with Orthodox leaders to develop and implement a public safety plan. Its mission will not be public relations but public health. Policies can be crafted and the concerns of the community can be addressed before problems arise and ultimatums are issued. To take but one example, if the city and state regularly track the percentage of positive cases, shouldn’t private schools be assessed relative to their size? Isn’t a school with 2,000 students different than a school with 200? Let’s all undertake to set aside the frustrations of the past week and commit to working cooperatively. Together we can demonstrate that we can protect both our spiritual and our physical health. Schick is a former deputy attorney general in New York and the president of the Rabbi Jacob Joseph School. Zwiebel is the executive vice president of Agudath Israel of America   https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-oped-how-orthodox-jews-can-attack-covid-20200929-dvjiqgvrkbdhhix5kib5gzfzdi-story.html

This Post is Not an "I Told You So"!

On March 12, 2020, I came out of my self-imposed blog retirement (I'm at my office every work day, except when I'm not), for one reason only! To bring attention to the onslaught of the upcoming pandemic that I believed at the time will bring an untold amount of death to the global population.

 http://theunorthodoxjew.blogspot.com/2020/03/this-suggests-that-anyone-in-position.html

 I e-mailed my children in January, that the pandemic that started in Wuhan, China was spreading rapidly and would arrive in the USA shortly. I told them to stock up on non-perishable food and water. I begged them not to attend shul on Purim or attend any Purim festivities.

So this is not hindsight; read my blog posts from March 12 forward.

I'm a student of history, and I researched the Pandemic of 1918, and realized how pandemics start and spread.

I basically pleaded with the Jewish community and anyone else that reads my blog to take this seriously, nah, what did I know?

It was the rabbis that knew EVERYTHING about EVERYTHING - they said go to shul on Purim, stay in yeshivas, and even now, pack the shuls on the yomim tovim as Israel goes into full lockdown. The vast majority of Orthodox rabbis are either ignorant of science or anti-science, until they need a doctor!

It is hard to feel pity for idiots, maybe that is a fault of mine, nevertheless, I don't! I do not wish anyone harm, but you choose your own destiny based on your free will!

So, whether I (or you) like it or not, I'm back for the time-being, and I will continue to call matters of life and death to your attention (spiritually or physically), and anything else that I believe is necessary. If I insulted anyone over the past year, -------- you probably deserved it :-)

Wishing almost all a G'mar Chasima Tova.

PM

Why is this happening now?

COVID-19 Update Rabbi Dr Glatt: Why this Tremendous Surge Now all Over Frum Communities?

 

 by Rabbi Aaron E. Glatt, MD

We are again at a crossroads. Both in the Jewish calendar, entering into Yom Kippur, where life and death decisions will be made, and in the world of COVID-19, with a disconcerting continuing rise in cases in our area, where life and death decisions will be made.

“Mi Bamageifa” (and who will die by plague…):

In just the past 24 hours, I have been inundated with numerous pressing shailos from communities all over regarding COVID-19 exposures. Here are but a few of the quarantine questions that Rabbonim and shul presidents have asked me.

“Our Rosh Hashana chazzan said wearing a mask was too difficult. He davened for the amud without one. He developed symptoms and tested positive the following day…”

“Our Rav gave a drasha on Rosh Hashana without a mask. He turned positive the next day…”

“A Rebbi (who was also a chazzan in a shul) did not wear a mask in his school or shul. He turned positive after Rosh Hashana…”

All wanted to know – does everyone in shul / school class need to quarantine?

Speciously, many people remain unconcerned about their spreading COVID-19 and ruining Yom Kippur and Succos for everyone they come into contact with, as evidenced by the laxity in some communities and some individuals regarding masking and distancing compliance. Based on what?

To remove any doubts about the scientific truths to date, these are the undisputed COVID-19 facts.

Worldwide to date:        Cases: 31,672,300;   Deaths: 972,081

United States to date:   Cases:   6,897,661;   Deaths: 200,818

The U.S. this week has an average of 41,490 new COVID-19 cases daily, up 13% from the average seen two weeks ago. That comes to 13 new cases / 100,000 population. At least 27 states are now reporting increased cases compared to just 9 states on September 14. On average, the U.S. is seeing ~ 770 daily deaths, and a model from the University of Washington predicts the U.S. death toll will double to 400,000 before the end of the year. The U.S. accounts for 4% of the world’s population, but has ~ 20% of the world’s deaths from COVID-19. Dr. Michael T. Osterholm, an excellent reputable senior epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota, stated: “I think we’re just in the beginning of what’s going to be a marked increase in cases in the fall. And it won’t be just a testing artifact, either. This is real.”

Israel: Sadly, acheinu beis Yisroel has been averaging well over 4,000 new cases daily, a rate of 47 new cases / 100,000, a rate 3.5x the U.S. incidence, a rate higher than any other country in the world at this time. Today there were 6,782 cases. Hospitals in Israel are nearing overload, surpassing the safe number of patients that they are able to care for. Hashem yeracheim.

5 Towns: Each one of the 5 Towns falls in the highest new case incidence numbers for Nassau County. Lawrence holds the number one spot in the County for the last 8 weeks, with Cedarhurst 3^rd, followed by Great Neck 4^th, Woodmere 5^th and Hewlett 6^th. Inwood is 8^th.

Far Rockaway: FR has the distinction, along with 5 other neighborhoods (Midwood, Borough Park, Williamsburg, Kew Gardens and Bensonhurst) of accounting for 20% of all new NYC cases.

How do you think these / our neighborhoods are described in the lay press and by the Department of Health? What type of comments do you think are being made on polite social media, never mind on the dark web and nefarious sites that always besmirch us.

Why is this happening now?

This all “re-started” with the flagrant disregard for scientifically vetted guidelines around weddings and kiddushim, large public gatherings, with many people eating unmasked and in close proximity.

What proof exists, you may ask, that such events indeed cause suffering? Maine public health officials just published a shocking report of an August 7^th wedding in Millinocket, Maine. At the wedding, guests ignored social distancing guidelines and mask recommendations. The results: 135 guests got COVID-19, with 7 guests DYING from this wedded bliss exposure. Do you think that young couple will ever be able to look back happily at what should have been one of the most joyous events in their life, knowing that their “simcha” was the cause of so much misery? This wedding is just one in a list of several studied “superspreader” events in the country over the summer. How many more are still to occur?

Do we all have such a short collective memory of what happened Purim and Pesach? Have we forgotten the numerous funerals and shivah calls that we zoomed? Aren’t we “gomlei chassadim”?

How can any person insist on their ‘right’ to not wear a mask when it will potentially cause a fellow person to die? When it might perpetuate a vile chilul Hashem that our community does not follow public health guidelines? How many yeshivas and shuls have to be publicly quarantined before we realize the bittul Torah and bittul tefillah betzibbur that we have caused?

All of this can still be avoided by following the simple – and not so difficult – halachic obligation to mask and social distance. This statement is based on my conversations with numerous poskim from all aspects of the frum community.

Rabbi Axelrod, shlita, will be giving his inaugural Shabbos Shuva drasha this motzei Shabbos, September 26^th, at 9:00 PM. He asked me to please still give my COVID-19 update Zoom talk before his shiur, which I will do from 8:15 – 8:45 PM this motzei Shabbos. You can join both sessions via:

Zoom at Meeting ID 980 3243 6809; Password: SUMMER2020;

or by phone: 929 205 6099;

or via YouTube link obtainable from yiwoodmerecovidupdate@gmail.com.

https://5townscentral.com/2020/09/24/covid-19-update-rabbi-dr-glatt-why-this-tremendous-surge-now-all-over-frum-communities/?fbclid=IwAR2vp0imNrV71sw955qQjCI0922o94MaWegbInSnkkZb3KoT_0R9FsUV50o

The scope and the devastation of the pandemic reflect bad luck, yes, and a dangerous world, yes, but also catastrophic failures of human foresight, communal will and leadership.

The Pandemic, From the Virus’s Point of View

The career of the coronavirus so far is, in Darwinian terms, a great success story.

 

No sensible person can dispute that Covid-19 is a great tragedy for humanity — a tragedy even in the ancient Greek sense, as defined by Aristotle, with the disastrous ending contingent on some prideful flaw in the protagonist. This time it’s not Oedipus or Agamemnon. This time it’s we who are that cocky protagonist, having brought disaster on ourselves. The scope and the devastation of the pandemic reflect bad luck, yes, and a dangerous world, yes, but also catastrophic failures of human foresight, communal will and leadership.

But look past that record of human failures for a moment, and consider this whole event from the point of view of the virus. Measure it by the cold logic of evolution: The career of SARS-CoV-2 so far is, in Darwinian terms, a great success story.

This now-notorious coronavirus was once an inconspicuous creature, lurking quietly in its natural host: some population of animals, possibly bats, in the caves and remnant forests of southern China. The existence of such a living hide-out — also known as a reservoir host — is logically necessary when any new virus appears suddenly as a human infection.

Why? Because everything comes from somewhere, and viruses come from cellular creatures, such as animals, plants or fungi. (A viral particle isn’t a cell; it’s just a strip of genomic instructions enclosed in a protein capsule — a message in a bottle.) A virus can only replicate itself, function as though it were alive and abide over time if it inhabits the cells of a more complex creature, like a sort of genetic parasite.

Generally, the relationship between virus and reservoir host represents an ancient evolutionary accommodation. The virus persists at a low profile, without causing trouble, without proliferating explosively, and in return it gets long-term security. Its horizons are modest: relatively small population, limited geographical scope.

But this guest-host arrangement is not imperturbably stable, or the end of the story. If another sort of creature comes in close contact with the host — by preying on it, by capturing it or maybe only by sharing the same cave — the virus might be jostled from its comfort zone and into a new situation: a new potential host.

Suddenly it’s like a gaggle of rats that jump ashore from a ship onto a remote island. The virus might thrive in this new habitat, or it might fail and die out. If it happens to thrive, if by chance it finds the new situation hospitable, then it might establish itself not just in the first new individual but in the new population.

It might discover itself capable of entering some of the new host’s cells, replicating abundantly and getting itself transmitted from that individual to others. That jump is called host-switching or, by a slightly more vivid term, spillover. If the spillover results in disease among a dozen or two dozen people, you have an outbreak. If it spreads countrywide, an epidemic. If it spreads worldwide, a pandemic.

Imagine again that gaggle of rats on a previously rat-free island. To their delight, they find the island inhabited by several endemic species of birds, naïve and trusting, accustomed to laying their eggs on the ground. The rats eat those eggs. Soon the island has lost its terns and its rails and its dotterels, but it has an abundance of rats.

Over time, the rats also acquire the ability to dig lizards out of their hiding places amid rocks and logs, and eat them. They develop an improved agility at tree climbing, and eat eggs from birds’ nests up there, too. Now you might as well call the place Rat Island. For the rats, this is a tale of evolutionary success.

If the remote island of habitat is a human being newly colonized by a virus from a nonhuman animal, we call that virus a zoonosis. The resulting infection is a zoonotic disease. More than 60 percent of human infectious diseases, including Covid-19, fall into this category of zoonoses that have succeeded. Some zoonotic diseases are caused by bacteria (such as the bacillus responsible for bubonic plague) or other kinds of pathogen, but most are viral.

Viruses have no malice against us. They have no purposes, no schemes. They follow the same simple Darwinian imperatives as do rats or any other creature driven by a genome: to extend themselves as much as possible in abundance, in geographical space and in time. Their primal instinct is to do just what God commanded to his newly created humans in Genesis 1:28: “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it.”

For an obscure virus, abiding within its reservoir host — a bat or a monkey in some remote region of Asia or Africa, or maybe a mouse in the American Southwest — spilling over into humans offers the opportunity to comply. Not every successful virus will “subdue” the planet, but some go a fair way toward subduing at least humans.

This is how the AIDS pandemic happened. A chimpanzee virus now known as SIVcpz passed from a single chimp into a single human, possibly by blood contact during mortal combat, and took hold in the human. Molecular evidence developed by two teams of scientists, one led by Dr. Beatrice H. Hahn, the other by Michael Worobey, tells us that this most likely happened more than a century ago, in the southeastern corner of Cameroon, in Central Africa, and that the virus took decades to attain proficiency at human-to-human transmission.

By 1960 that virus had traveled downriver to big cities such as Léopoldville (now Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo); then it spread to the Americas and burst into notice in the early 1980s. Now we call it “H.I.V.-1 group M”: It’s the pandemic strain, accounting for most of the 71 million known human infections to date.

Chimpanzees were a species in decline, alas, because of habitat loss and killing by humans; humans were a species in ascendance. The SIVcpz virus reversed its own evolutionary prospects by getting into us and adapting well to the new host. It jumped from a sinking lifeboat onto a luxury cruise ship.

SARS-CoV-2 has done likewise, though its success has occurred much more quickly. It has now infected more than 30 million people, just under half as many as the number of people infected by H.I.V., and in 10 months rather than 10 decades. It’s not the most successful human-infecting virus on the planet — that distinction lies elsewhere, possibly with the Epstein-Barr virus, a very transmissible species of herpesvirus, which may reside within at least 90 percent of all humans, causing syndromes in some and lying latent in most. But SARS-CoV-2 is off to a roaring start.

Now, for purposes of illustration, imagine a different scenario, involving a different virus. In the mountain forests of Rwanda lives a small, insectivorous bat known as Hill’s horseshoe bat (Rhinolophus hilli). This bat is real, but it has been glimpsed only rarely and is classified as critically endangered. Posit a coronavirus, for which this bat serves as reservoir host. Call the virus RhRW19 (a coded abbreviation of the sort biologists use), because it was detected within the species Rhinolophus hilli (Rh), in Rwanda (RW), in 2019 (19)

The virus is hypothetical, but it’s plausible, given that coronaviruses are known to occur in many kinds of horseshoe bats around the world. RhRW19 is on the brink of extinction, because the rare bat is its sole refuge. The lifeboat is leaking badly and nearly swamped.

But then a single Rwandan farmer, needing fertilizer for his crops on a meager patch of dirt, enters a cave and shovels up some bat guano. The guano has come from Hill’s horseshoe bats and it contains the virus. In the process of shoveling and breathing, the farmer becomes infected with RhRW19. He passes it to his brother, and the brother carries it to a provincial clinic where he works as a nurse. The virus circulates for weeks among employees of the clinic and their contacts, making some sick, killing one person, while natural selection improves its capacity to replicate within cells of the human respiratory tract and transmit between people.

A visiting doctor becomes infected, and she carries the virus back to Kigali, the capital. Soon it is at the airport, in the airways of people who don’t yet feel symptoms and are boarding flights for Kinshasa, Doha and London. Now you can give the improved virus a different name: SARS-CoV-3. It’s a success story that hasn’t happened yet but very easily could.

Coronaviruses are an exceptionally dangerous group. The journal Cell recently published a paper on pandemic diseases and how Covid-19 has come upon us, by a scientist named Dr. David M. Morens and one co-author. Dr. Morens, a prolific author and keen commentator, serves as senior scientific adviser to the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci. His co-author on this paper is Dr. Fauci.

The paper says, among other things, that coronaviruses harbored in various mammalian species “may essentially be preadapted to human infectivity.” Not just bats but other mammals — pangolins, palm civets, cats, ferrets, mink, who knows what — contain cells that are susceptible to the same viral hooks that allow coronaviruses to catch hold of some human cells. Existing within those reservoir hosts may prepare the viruses nicely for infecting us.

The closest known relative of SARS-CoV-2 is a virus discovered seven years ago, in a bat captured at a mine shaft in Yunnan Province, China, by a team under the leadership of Dr. Zhengli Shi, of the Wuhan Institute of Virology. This virus carries the moniker RaTG13. It is about 96 percent similar to SARS-CoV-2, but that four percentage point difference represents decades of evolutionary divergence, possibly in a different population of bats. In other words, RaTG13 and our nemesis bug are not the same virus; they are like cousins who have lived all their adult lives in separate towns.

What happened, during those decades of evolutionary divergence, to bring a still-undiscovered bat coronavirus to the brink of spillover into humans and enable it to become SARS-CoV-2? We don’t yet know. Scientists in China will keep looking for that closer-match virus. The evidence gathered so far is mixed and incomplete, complicated by the fact that coronaviruses are capable of a nifty evolutionary trick: recombination.

That means that when two strains of coronavirus infect the same individual animal, they may swap sections and emerge as a composite, possibly (by sheer chance) encompassing the most aggressive, adaptive sections of the two. SARS-CoV-2 may be such a composite, built by happenstance and natural selection from components known to exist among other viruses in the wild, and emerging from its nonhuman host with a fearsome capacity to grab, enter and replicate within certain human cells.

Bad luck for us. But evolution is not rigged to please Homo sapiens.

SARS-CoV-2 has made a great career move, spilling over from its reservoir host into humans. It already has achieved two of the three Darwinian imperatives: expanding its abundance and extending its geographical range. Only the third imperative remains as a challenge: to perpetuate itself in time.

Will we ever be rid of it entirely, now that it’s a human virus? Probably not. Will we ever get past the travails of this Covid-19 emergency? Yes.

Dr. Morens has recently been a co-author of another paper examining how coronaviruses have come at us. In it, he and his colleagues nod to the eminent molecular biologist Joshua Lederberg, a Nobel Prize laureate in 1958, at age 33, who later wrote: “The future of humanity and microbes likely will unfold as episodes of a suspense thriller that could be titled ‘Our Wits Versus Their Genes.’ ”

Dr. Morens is on target, and Dr. Lederberg was right. Viruses can evolve, quickly and efficaciously. But we humans are smart, sometimes.

David Quammen is an author and journalist whose books include “Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic.”

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/19/opinion/sunday/coronavirus-covid-evolution.html

Useless Idiots! Dr. Stuart Ditchek, a pediatrician in Midwood, said he had nine patients test positive yesterday out of a total of 31 tests, for a positivity rate of nearly 30%, compared to the citywide average of 1.2%.

NYC health department sees ‘significant’ Covid-19 rise in largely Orthodox neighborhoods

 

The number of cases is rising sharply in areas that were hit hard in March and April.

(JTA) — Six heavily Orthodox neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens are currently contributing 20% of all new Covid-19 cases in New York City, and rising cases there are cause for “significant concern,” city health officials announced Tuesday.

The new data comes amid signs of growing alarm in New York City’s Orthodox communities about the possible beginning of a second wave of cases, after a brutal spring and relatively quiet summer.

The data corresponds to what doctors on the ground in the neighborhoods are reporting — that the number of cases is rising sharply in areas that were hit hard in March and April.

Dr. Stuart Ditchek, a pediatrician in Midwood, said he had nine patients test positive yesterday out of a total of 31 tests, for a positivity rate of nearly 30%, compared to the citywide average of 1.2%.

Ditchek said he’s seeing an “exponential rise” in daily cases — and growing increasingly concerned that his community may face a second wave of disease like the one that was propelled by communal gatherings for the holiday of Purim in mid-March.

“It feels like Purim to me but worse because by Purim we couldn’t test, so we really didn’t know what we were up against,” he said. “I felt it was coming but now what we’re seeing is sort of a snowball effect every day.”

The city’s health department had been watching the neighborhoods, all home to large Orthodox communities, for weeks after cases started rising in August with most attributed to the large weddings held in many Orthodox communities, particularly Borough Park and Williamsburg.

But the case numbers have continued to rise over the past several weeks, despite robocalls from health department officials targeting Orthodox neighborhoods and pleas for testing and mask wearing from the mayor himself.

In several neighborhoods in south Brooklyn, including Midwood, Borough Park and Bensonhurst — which the health department is now labeling the “Ocean Parkway Cluster” after the avenue that connects them — as well as in Williamsburg and Far Rockaway, cases tripled from Aug. 1 to Sept. 19. In Kew Gardens, a neighborhood in Queens, cases doubled in the same period.

While many of the cases over the last six weeks have been linked to the large weddings typical of Orthodox communities, which were resumed in many communities without masks or social distancing by the middle of the summer, the spread of the coronavirus in the communities has likely been exacerbated by a number of factors.

As weddings resumed in August, kids started returning from summer camps and families moved back to Brooklyn after spending the summer months in bungalow colonies in upstate New York. Schools recently resumed in-person classes in many Orthodox neighborhoods, with some flouting social distancing or mask wearing.

Many synagogues have returned to their pre-pandemic capacities despite the continued threat of the pandemic.

And many synagogues have returned to their pre-pandemic capacities despite the continued threat of the pandemic, a sign both of the fervor with which the period of repentance leading up to the High Holidays are regarded in Orthodox communities and the widespread sense that the coronavirus pandemic had ended in the communities long ago.

Orthodox communities in Borough Park, Crown Heights and Williamsburg, three neighborhoods home to large Hasidic populations, were hit particularly hard as the pandemic first hit the United States in March after celebrations of Purim, a Jewish holiday often marked by parties and heavy drinking, came as the virus spread in the city but before restrictions were put in place.

By late spring, many in these communities had returned to normal life, resuming in-person studies in yeshivas and prayers at synagogues and largely forgoing the masks that were then becoming a common sight in the city.

To many, the extent to which the communities were battered by the virus in March gave them a pass to resume normal life as many assumed that the communities had achieved herd immunity. Indeed, through much of the summer, local health clinics reported few new cases of Covid-19 despite the resumption of normal activities.

But in August, the signs of a second wave began appearing in several communities, with weddings eyed as the culprit.

An administrator at a network of health clinics in Williamsburg saw the number of cases increase dramatically over the past week.

Where there had been one or two cases per week over the summer, those numbers increased to ten cases per week in early September and more than 50 cases just last week. The clinic is now preparing for a second wave with the same measures it took before the first wave, making sure the clinic has enough personal protective equipment and reviewing protocol for testing and isolating suspected Covid cases.

“We were like, oh, that’s kind of what happened with our cases in early March,” she said of the dramatically increasing cases.

With synagogues packed over Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur and Sukkot approaching, she expects the numbers to continue to rise over the next several weeks.

Just yesterday, she said, the clinics had 10 positive tests, 33 negatives and more than 20 pending results. Even if all of the pending tests are negative, the positivity rate at the clinic would be over 15% — more than five times what New York’s governor has determined is the threshold to safely operate schools.

https://jewishweek.timesofisrael.com/nyc-health-department-sees-significant-covid-19-rise-in-largely-orthodox-neighborhoods/?preview_id=1309493

 

 

Rabbi Moshe Tuvia Lieff of Agudath Israel Bais Binyomin (Ave L) in Brooklyn, formerly a rabbi in Minneapolis, has Covid and exposed numerous people when he spoke in his synagogue on Rosh Hashana.