Danielle Ziri
Haaretz, June 5, 2020
As thousands of New Yorkers continue to take to the streets calling for racial justice following last week’s killing of George Floyd, members of the Orthodox community are calling out Mayor Bill de Blasio on what they see as a “double standard.”
They are asking why large-scale demonstrations are taking place despite restrictions still being in place to combat the coronavirus pandemic, while houses of worship are shuttered – and after the Jewish community was singled out by de Blasio at the height of the outbreak for a perceived contravention of lockdown guidelines. Many, like the mayor, reject the comparison between the right to protest and the right to convene in religious institutions, but the position, voiced by some in the ultra-Orthodox community, highlights the growing divides between them and the city.
“The double standard is blatant and shocking,” said Chaskel Bennett, co-founder of the Flatbush Jewish Community Coalition. “For months, we have seen our community come under unrelenting scrutiny by ‘gotcha’ media coverage of Hasidic Jews not social distancing or wearing masks, while the overwhelming majority of religious Jews in New York City were doing all the right things.
When a reporter from the Jewish publication Hamodia asked de Blasio about a potential double standard at his daily press briefing on Tuesday, the mayor rejected any comparisons.
“When you see a nation, an entire nation, simultaneously grappling with an extraordinary crisis seeded in 400 years of American racism – I’m sorry, that is not the same question as the understandably aggrieved store owner, or the devout religious person who wants to go back to services,” he said.
Angry reactions soon poured in on social media.
“If it was unsafe for Jews to attend a funeral, it should be unsafe for anyone to attend a protest,” Hasidic Rabbi Dovid B. Kaplan tweeted. “The Jews at the funeral should have held up some protest signs … because apparently covid ignores protests and only spreads at Jewish funerals.”