| News In Depth |

Shuttered Shuls, Shattered Trust

By Yochonon Donn | October 14, 2020

Has Cuomo gone too far? The closures, the backlash, and the shattered trust

Photos: Len Weinstein

When Governor Cuomo sprang a surprise crackdown on Jewish locales last week, instituting a draconian lockdown, closing schools and nonessential businesses, limiting shul attendance to ten mispallelim regardless of a building’s size, and denounced the ultra-Orthodox sector as a community of lawbreakers, even his staunchest allies were
shocked.
Can the rift ever be repaired?

Andrew Cuomo and the Jews go back such a long way, he frequently injects Hebrew words into his speeches. “You’re all, as they say in Italian, mishpachah,” he once told a non-Jewish crowd at a fundraiser.

It is therefore bewildering, to say the least, for longtime Cuomo watchers as the governor has appeared to embrace confrontation and battle with the Orthodox community these past few weeks. He referred to them with the pejorative term “ultra-Orthodox,” denounced them on national television as lawbreakers, and used fake pictures and audio as “evidence” of a plot against him.

All this is leading longtime allies of the governor to demand an apology, with many saying that the rupture is the worst of his ten years as the state’s chief executive.

100 Percent Betrayed

The coronavirus infection rate in New York, once the worst in the nation, had remained below 1 percent for 50 days before it began to inch upward again about three weeks ago. The neighborhoods with the worst numbers are actually areas where few Jews live. But in a surprise crackdown last week, the governor focused on Jewish locales, instituting a draconian lockdown, closing schools and nonessential businesses and limiting shul attendance to ten mispallelim, regardless of a building’s size.

“The Orthodox Jewish community — ultra-Orthodox Jewish community — what’s happening there is the rules were never enforced in these communities,” Cuomo said last week, implying that they are a community of lawbreakers.

“They never followed the first rules,” he claimed.

As proof, he cited the measles outbreak two years ago. “Same argument — ‘Well, measles will spread through your community. Well, measles will infect the larger community,’ ” Cuomo said. “Same conversation.”

It is unclear what the science-minded governor was referring to, since reports have shown that chassidic communities actually have higher vaccination rates than the general population.

Orthodox groups such as Agudath Israel responded to the remarks indignantly, issuing a rare harsh rejoinder to the governor by pointing to the mass closure of shuls and yeshivos when the pandemic first struck, as well as the miniscule levayah of the Novominsker Rebbe.

But the worst was yet to come. On Tuesday of Chol Hamoed, Cuomo’s chief of staff arranged for what she billed as a call for a select few with the governor to hash out a policy that would work for the Jews and tackle the COVID rates ahead of Simchas Torah. The dozen participants called in at 9 a.m. and were greeted with a muted phone — they could only listen as Cuomo extolled his leadership before urging them to accept a 50 percent capacity limit on shuls for a period of two weeks.

There was no way to respond — despite being asked if they had any questions, and repeatedly pressing the button to speak, there were only three softball questions allowed. One participant said he later found out that the three questions were planted by the governor’s team, meaning participants weren’t allowed to deviate from them.

The participant said that he held a conference call with members of his kehillah after the call to see whether a 50 percent capacity was feasible. Suddenly, they were tossed a grenade by Cuomo when he announced a complicated plan revolving around a cluster of red, orange, and yellow zones, with a full-blown closure of nearly all frum neighborhoods located in red or orange zones.

“Boom,” the person described was his feeling. “We felt a hundred percent betrayed. The trust element with him is very bad at this point.”

Excerpted from Mishpacha Magazine. To view full version, SUBSCRIBE FOR FREE or LOG IN.

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Comments (3)

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D. C.
5 years ago
Reply

This week was only the second time in the history of my many years of reading the Mishpacha that the cover story actually disturbed my menuchas Shabbos. As one who follows the news closely, I have been reading and hearing all about the situation in New York State and having to look at the picture of their governor actually turned my stomach.
Of course, I understand the necessity, the same way I understood the importance of covering the pandemic with intensity at its onset, despite the distaste and sadness it brought to those of us who read the magazine on Shabbos.
However, I take offense to the question posed in large letters at the beginning of the article asking whether the rift can ever be repaired. The real question Jews should be asking themselves is: should it?
It’s going to be two years before the Jews in New York go to the polls to elect a new governor, and I hope with all my heart that no one ever forgets the way the governor spoke to our community and about our community. The way he went on national news and talked about how politically powerful we are and how no one follows the rules. The way he intentionally targeted us to make sure that no one could celebrate our Yom Tov legally even in a safe manner.
Regardless of your position on wearing masks, whether you think the majority or minority of Jews are following social distancing or are not, and even if you think that maybe it was okay for Cuomo to draw red lines around these frum neighborhoods, as a Jew I hope you never forget the way he targeted your brothers and sisters in a way he targeted no others — only because they are Jewish.
And I hope you remember, too, that at the end of the day these brothers and sisters are the only ones you can truly rely on to drop everything and help you in sickness and in health, in birth and in death — and vote accordingly.
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E.B.
5 years ago
Reply

I was very disappointed by your article about Governor Cuomo’s recent shutdowns in our communities. While I agree that the words he used and the actions he took were extreme, writing a full article about it without taking any responsibility does us no favors.
Although summer numbers were extremely low, leading to a false sense of security, no official rules or guidelines were changed, and yet our communities decided to open again as if no pandemic was still raging. Many local yeshivos opened with a complete disregard for rules about masks and distancing. Kiddushim, bar mitzvahs, and weddings have been held with large crowds and no masks. Although cases were already rising, when the Yamim Tovim came around, so many shuls and yeshivos opened with no rules in place.
And the protests are even worse! Your article barely made mention of these protests, but what a complete chillul Hashem. This is not how frum Jews behave. This is not how we respond to crises. I’ve seen videos of people accusing DOH officials and others of acting like Nazis, which is absolutely despicable. Not only does such an accusation cheapen the Holocaust and cheapen anti-Semitism, but it certainly doesn’t help our cause.
As mentioned in a tiny blurb in your news section, instead of railing against the authorities and complaining of anti-Semitism, we should be turning inward and complying — to protect ourselves, our families, our communities, and our mission to be mekadeish sheim Shamayim.
1. 0
  R. Soffer
  5 years ago
  Reply
  
  Thank you for covering the chaotic confusion, bungling mismanagement, and overt malice we New Yorkers have been living with over the past few weeks. Somehow, I didn’t expect the reaction I found in this week’s Inbox and it left me deeply troubled.
  Biased local politicians and national media spotlighting only our community’s bad actors is exactly how we got into this situation in the first place. While there may be merit to the concerns about lack of compliance in our community, expressing only one-dimension of the truth is divisive and damaging.
  What about all the schools and shuls who demonstrated exemplary actions in spite of the ever-changing onslaught, and at times, contradictory government regulations, medical research findings, and community needs? What about all the “walk-by” bar-mitzvah boys and “backyard” couples who literally curbed their simchahs for the health of their neighbors?
  Personally, I would like to extend my deep appreciation for my own children’s schools — Torah Academy for Girls in Far Rockaway and Yeshiva Ketana of Long Island. The hours of collaboration and strategizing, hundreds of thousands of dollars, and overwhelming dedication to my children allowed for school to start in September with safety precautions beyond CDC dictates. Contrary to your reader’s response, all the schools in our community took similar measures to open safely.
  The teachers, our true heroes, rose to a challenge their better-compensated public school counterparts refused, and prepared to nurture our children after six months of lockdown with open hearts and minds. They continue their holy work, persevering through a never-ending blitz of health policy changes and switching teaching modalities on a dime between in-person, phone conference, Zoom, and every combination and permutation of the three.
  As Mishpacha has already done, we as a community need to highlight and applaud all these incredible people, instead of brushing them off because their stories are not sensational news.