For a week or more, I gathered information about one of the most painful puzzles in the coronavirus crisis in New York City — the clashes between the city government and Hasidic Jewish leaders and their followers.
Did these ultra-Orthodox Jews break the “shelter in place” rules? Of course they did.
Had they made attempts to work with city officials in advance, but then emotions linked to the funeral of a rabbi got out of control? Yes, that appeared to be the case.
Was that infamous tweet from Mayor Bill de Blasio — aimed at the whole “Jewish community” — utterly bizarre? Yes it was.
So what was the real issue here? Hold that thought. First, here is a large chunk of an essential New York Times story — “2,500 Mourners Jam a Hasidic Funeral, Creating a Flash Point for de Blasio“ — as background information for those who didn’t follow this drama.
Soon after a revered Hasidic rabbi died of the coronavirus in Brooklyn … his fellow congregants informed the Police Department of an unexpected decision: Despite the coronavirus restrictions now in place, they would hold a public funeral.
The local police precinct did not stand in their way, a testament to the Hasidic community’s influence in the Williamsburg neighborhood. By 3:30 p.m., police officers began erecting barricades, expecting a small number of mourners to show up. Loudspeakers were put up to help mourners hear while keeping their distance.
But by 7:30 p.m., an estimated 2,500 ultra-Orthodox Jewish men had arrived to mourn Rabbi Chaim Mertz, packing together shoulder-to-shoulder on the street and on the steps of brownstones, clearly violating social distancing guidelines and turning the funeral into one of the most fraught events of the virus crisis for Mayor Bill de Blasio.
Police began to disperse the mourners, some of whom were not wearing masks. Word of the gathering soon reached City Hall, where the mayor decided to go to Brooklyn to oversee the dispersal himself.
The backlash against de Blasio was incredible. Yes, the word “Anti-Semitism” was used.
I kept reading the coverage, wondering: Was this just a New York City story or was there content here that is related to how journalists are covering COVID-19 stories elsewhere in America?
The more I thought about all of this, the more I kept focusing on one connecting link between New York City and journalism issues in flyover country and, maybe, even the West Coast.
The key: The powers that be cracked down on mourners at the Hasidic funeral (and the mayor pinned this problem on the “Jewish community”) while throngs of other New Yorkers gathered in public places — Damn shelter in place rules, let’s party. At one point, the Orthodox Jewish Public Affairs Council started tweeting out photos of people packing parks along the city’s waterfronts to watch the Blue Angels fly over as a salute to nurses, doctors and other first responders. Police looked on and did zippo.
There’s the connecting link: In many places in America, some (not all) public officials seem to have one set of coronavirus rules for religious groups and another for secular folks.
This is becoming especially obvious as bars, restaurants and other establishments are beginning to cautiously open their doors. And what is the difference between hundreds of cars in a big-box parking lot (with people getting out of them, no less) and a few hundred cars at a drive-in worship service? If there are safe ways to hand people hamburgers, maybe there are safe ways to provide worshippers with the sacraments?
In other words, journalists need to be looking for church-state double standards.
That was the Big Idea in a Forward think piece that really is worth pondering. The headline read: “Besieged de Blasio accused of double standards over social distancing enforcement.” Here is a crucial section for city-desk editors everywhere to think about:
The Jewish and African-American communities in particular have voiced concerns over a checkered public safety system that seems to give protective masks to white affluent hipsters, summonses to Hasidic Jews and severe injuries to people of color.
“A lot of it has to do with the inconsistent ways policing is being done,” Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, who is black, said in a video …, speaking over photos of New York police officers and the Jewish public-safety group Shomrim aggressively breaking up a Hasidic funeral procession in Williamsburg, juxtaposed with images of police officers walking calmly by crowds of sunbathers. “The differences were in the geographies.”
A Jewish advocacy group went even further, saying the mayor “added fuel to the fire” of anti-Semitism by singling out the Williamsburg funeral. The group, called the Lawfare Project, has made a public records request for documents related to the NYPD’s deployment to Williamsburg, as well as data pertaining to 311 calls and any assignment of officers to predominantly Hasidic, Muslim, African-American and Latino neighborhoods during the outbreak.Their goal is to see whether the police department used different strategies for areas with different demographics.
Think about it. This story is bigger than New York City. Is everyone being asked to play by the same rules?