NEW CITY – Prominent Orthodox and Hasidic Jewish rabbis in Rockland County, the federal court to block Governor Andrew Cuomo’s COVID-19 restrictions, saying that movements violate their constitutional rights and point to their religion.
“This paints a target on the backs of Orthodox Jews,” Network activist Spring Valley Yossi Gestetner said Thursday at an outdoor news convention in Rockland County Courthouse. “
Wednesday’s lawsuit in the U. S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, the same day the Rockland County government announced the known 680th coronavirus-related death since the pandemic hit the region.
Rockland County is home to one of the few COVID compliance initiative spaces that the governor enacted through Executive Order No. October 202. 68 on October 5 at least 5.
Declining portions of the state, which also include spaces in Brooklyn and Orange County, are found in predominantly Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods.
The court’s lawsuit states that Cuomo’s decree was based on “fear without epidemiological knowledge or other objective knowledge. “The lawsuit sees the tape as evidence that the governor admitted that the policy was not “written with a scalpel” but “cut with an axe. “”and” is not the most productive way to do it. “
In Rockland, a “red zone” about 20 km in diameter and centered around east Ramapo requires the closure of school buildings and non-essential businesses; Please note that restaurants can only offer takeaway service; and meetings, adding services, are limited to 10 people.
A ‘yellow zone’ approximately one mile wide with restrictions surrounds the ‘red zone’.
“You can’t control a virus,” Ron Coleman, a lawyer at Dhillon Law Group, said Friday.
The plaintiffs come with Rabbi Moshe Rosner of the Yesheos Yakovin Monsey congregation and Rabbi Samuel Teitelbaum of the Oholei Shem D’Nitra congregation, Spring Valley, whose shuls are in the “red zone”.
Rabbi Chaim Leibish Rottenberg of the Nitzach Yisroel congregation in Monsey is also a whistleblower. Rottenberg’s house, located by the shul on Forshay Road, was the site of a horrific machete attack at a Janukkah party last December. Rottenberg provided an invocation The State of the State of State in Cuomo in January. After a victim died as a result of the attack, Cuomo appointed in his reminiscence a law, the Josef Neumann Act on Hate Crimes against Domestic Terrorism.
Rottenberg’s synagogue is in the ‘yellow zone’.
Cuomo criticized the group’s judgment on Thursday, saying they can understand anything they want, but “those who rely on the truth are the ones I’ll focus on. “
He said he perceived the concerns of the groups and said the restrictions were even less stringent than in March, when the state closed all non-essential businesses, adding places of worship.
But he said that some Orthodox had chosen to adhere to the rules, either in March or now.
Then, he said, it’s up to local governments to have COVID restrictions.
“If there is a lack of compliance and there is a lack of compliance, there is an epidemic,” Cuomo of the hot spots.
Citing leaked tapes of phone calls between the governor and Orthodox leaders, in which Cuomo allegedly called the closures in the red zone a “fear-inspired response. “
Whistleblowers also claimed that Cuomo had threatened to close devout establishments if the network agreed to stick to its decree.
The lawsuit alleges that the governor ignored “repeated pleas . . . to cancel and restore its ordinance that designates specific communities and places of worship for discriminatory treatment. “
“Whistleblowers are now forced to initiate this action by asking this Court to interfere with their highest sacred rights of this irrational order, motivated by faith and fear,” it reads in the court’s file.
NY VS. COVID: Cuomo threatens to withdraw investment from schools and governments if regulations are followed
LIST: Schools that have interrupted in-person learning
ROCKLAND COVID CLUSTER: Find a search map of the ”red zone”
The rabbis described the time of the order as discriminatory. Restrictions were scheduled to begin at 12:05 a. m. on October 9, in the middle of Hoshana Rabbah’s party, the last of the days of the trial, a birthday party held through synagogue services. The next days in the Jewish calendar are the holidays of Shemini Atzeres and Simchas Torah.
The court case calls Cuomo “the implementation of separate collection limits from science-based determinations following the Centers for Disease Control ‘s (CDC)’ social estating guidelines. “
Yossi Gestetner says Cuomo is pointing at the backs of Orthodox Jews while leaving other communities not vulnerable to #COVID @lohud pic. twitter. com/LEtcqI1ABh
Complainants claim that the restrictions regard the cult of the congregation as “non-essential,” depriving them and all other New York City citizens of basic rights through the U. S. Constitutions and the new York State’s legal and administrative code, adding freedoms of religion, expression, and assembly. I fix as well as due process and equivalent coverage under the law. “
Agudath Israel of America, an umbrella organization that defends the rights of Orthodox Jews, and three New York-affiliated Orthodox congregations lost one to block the move last week in the Eastern District District Court. But it’s not the first time
Since the outbreak hit the region last spring, Rockland has recorded 16,891 COVID-19s.
For more information about COVID-19 in Rockland, see Coronavirus County Panels COVID-19 in rocklandgov. com.
Nancy Cutler writes about people