Hours before the start of a new coronavirus offensive in New York, Borough Park is furious.
On Monday, Governor Andrew Cuomo ordered the closure of public and personal schools in 20 New York City zip codes where positivity rates had soared in recent weeks, the maximum of which is home to large ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities. on the streets of one of the city’s hot spots, a classic home of New York’s Hasidic population.
“It’s just political theater,” infuriated Mike Weber, whose teenage sons share the Yeshiva Nesivos Hatalmud, unmasked status outside the facility, north of the neighborhood. “I’m not involved with the crown, I’m involved with the children. “
On Tuesday night, tensions were at a boil when many members of the ultra-Orthodox network took to the streets to protest the crackdown. The New York Post reports that protesters set fire to the trash and rejected dispersal orders, and “chased two of the city sheriff’s deputies who responded. “A report from the scene said the crowd was chanting”Jewish life matters!”
Religious schools, attended by the vast majority of academics in the affected neighborhoods, were already closed by the Sucot Jewish holiday, which ends Friday, but almost every single ieshiva in Borough Park had an attached succa: a transit venue, somewhere between a shop and a hut, of which largely masked men and boys came en masse throughout the afternoon.
Monday’s governor’s order left those places of worship intact, only for him to decree on Tuesday that they can only accommodate up to 10 other people at a time.
Even network leaders who passed the resolution to close the yeshivas and take other steps to involve the pandemic in the former epicenter of the global coronavirus denounced the relentless and contradictory messages of Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio. Monday’s governor’s order came a day after the Mayor called for the closure not only of schools, but also of local shops, and that this program not begin on Tuesday but Wednesday. designated “red zones” to close as well.
The most recent announcement was careful with the details, but included the governor’s court cases on how the city’s inability to take strong action against social estgnation and mask misdeeds made the new crackdown necessary.
“If the plan I followed were implemented, we wouldn’t be here,” Cuomo said at a news convention in Albany.
The jockey adapts to a trend that dates back to the early days of the pandemic, when Cuomo smote De Blasio’s efforts to impose an order to stay home and transfer academics remotely in the five counties, before issuing those orders.
“We had a challenge with a constant message from the city, the state and the web,” Alan Kadish, an Orthodox Jewish physician and president of Touro College, a personal Jewish college in New York, told the Daily Beast. If you have a press convention where the city and the state disagree, it is more difficult for the network to feel a partnership with one voice that says, “This is what we want to do to get it right, that’s what we want to do to keep the kids educated. “It’s frustrating. “
Cuomo’s workplace did not provide an official before the deadline. The mayor’s workplace told the Daily Beast that he had conducted 7,443 tests on the nine postcodes with the highest positivity rates, while taking a similar blow to pressure from the governor to take strong action against the offenders.
“While others mainly in ‘implementation’ / ticketing, the city believes that we want to have a technique of ‘all of the above’ that is emerging in terms of testing, education, awareness and compliance. That’s what’s been proven,” the spokesman said. Bill Neidhardt.
In reaction to the governor’s instructions, Touro will close only his higher education institutions and studies, but also an ieshiva operating in the zip code highlighted at Kew Gardens Hills in Queens next week. Kadish described the school’s closing order as “medically reasonable. “
Less reasonable, he argued, the fact that state and municipal governments do not combine paintings to chart a course for the reopening of schools if the rate of positivity decreases. that at any time the coronavirus wave is less severe than the first and that the higher proportion of infections in devout Jewish communities is due to the fact that only in poor health others took the test.
“It’s just a small percentage increase, it’s not as it used to be. It’s absolutely different now,” complained Jack Brody, whose 20 grandchildren attend scattered schools in Borough Park as he prepared to enroll in a mass of other internal unmasked succa men at United Talmudical Academy.
Kadish said there was evidence of these claims, but more tests were needed. That is why it is essential, he argued, that de Blasio and Cuomo identify a roadmap for the reopening of schools involving the wider population of Borough Park and testing them. Meanwhile, Gothamist reported last week that some local leaders gave the impression that they were taking steps to deflate the number of COVID-19 tests in besieged Orthodox areas.
“Any proposal to close schools deserves to be accompanied by widespread testing this week, so we know the scale of the problem,” Kadish said. “With the right encouragement, especially by stating that there is a willingness to open schools as soon as imaginable if the infection rate decreases, this will prompt the network to access the resources needed to conduct the tests. “
The effect of the conflicting commandos of Albany and City Hall was looking at the floor in Borough Park. A local rabbi, who asked to speak anonymously because his yeshiva council had not legalized him to comment, noted the discrepancy between the order closing the Cuomo school and De Blasio’s willingness to also close the outlets as proof that the total plan was arbitrary and politically motivated.
“Why didn’t you close all business? Because all the business owners said it would be the last nail in the coffin for them,” the rabbi said. “Children simply can’t speak for themselves, yet this is the last nail in the coffin for them. “
The devoted leader has raised fears that young people may slip into reading instruction, while the best academics in schools may miss out on state Regents exams for the time being, after New York canceled annual tests due to the pandemic. of this spring.
Kadish and other experts explained the specific sensitivity around yeshivas, which have been a point of tension for years. Local critics and dissidents have long complained that some schools do not offer a good enough secular education, and the city has closed many that did not require academics. vaccinate against a deadly measles outbreak last year.
Rabbi Jaim David Zwiebel, vice president of the nonprofit Agudath Israel, noted that many ultra-Orthodox practitioners lack connections and other technologies that allow young people to examine remotely. and parents to get reliable data on existing events, adding the pandemic. In the opinion of many, ieshiva are the only way to ensure the continuity of ultra-Orthodox traditions.
“As a community, there is nothing more valuable and vital to us than passing on Jewish heritage to our youth and the next generation,” Zwiebel said. “This is the fundamental devout legal responsibility that parents have towards their Jewish children. And it’s to make sure the next generation is a component of the link that returns to Sinai. You want Jewish schools.
But the mayor does not have the strength to reopen schools now that Cuomo closed them and a coordination roadmap for the resumption of face-to-face courses is still lacking.
“We have the opportunity to do widespread testing this week, show what the real infection rate is, see what the real hospitalization rates are and when schools can be allowed to open,” Kadish said. “If we don’t take advantage of this opportunity, then the resolution is a bad resolution, because that time will be lost. “
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