Paywalled. Is this based on genetic analysis?
Also, can the Syrians even be considered “ultra-Orthodox”?
Here you go.
Part of the Brooklyn Covid-19 Uptick Traces to Deal, N.J.
Health officials have traced outbreaks in two neighborhoods to end-of-summer socializing by a close-knit Sephardic Jewish community at the Jersey Shore
The Midwood neighborhood of Brooklyn, N.Y., has a significant number of Sephardic families.
The Midwood neighborhood of Brooklyn, N.Y., has a significant number of Sephardic families.
By Paul Berger
Oct. 18, 2020 8:00 am ET
The coronavirus cases started ticking up in July among a tightknit community of Sephardic Jews summering at the Jersey Shore.
By October, the cases had contributed to the virus’s spread 60 miles north in Brooklyn, N.Y., where health officials scrambled to prevent a second wave of infection.
Recent attention regarding the resurgence of the virus in New York City and its suburbs has focused on ultra-Orthodox communities with roots in Eastern Europe, who have chafed at restrictions imposed by Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Such communities are typified by large families of seven or eight children living in multifamily homes and apartments where Yiddish is often the first language spoken.
The Sephardic families of Gravesend and Midwood in Brooklyn generally have fewer children and tend to live in single-family homes where English is the first language. They are largely doctors, lawyers and businesspeople with a background in countries such as Syria and typically one foot planted firmly in the secular world.
Sephardic community leaders said they have urged mask-wearing, social distancing and vigilance since the start of the virus outbreak. But they said pandemic fatigue, some apathy and mistrust, as well as a culture built around large communal events, proved fertile ground for the virus’s spread.
The community is thought to number between 50,000 and 70,000 people and is concentrated in Gravesend and Midwood, in a southern swath of the borough 2 miles north of Coney Island. When Covid-19 first arrived in New York City early this year it swept through the community, killing almost 100 people in a couple of months, according to communal officials.
Frequent large gatherings with hundreds of guests are common for life events and Jewish holidays and help create a sense that everyone knows everybody else. ”It hit home every time somebody got ill or passed away,” said Jack Aini, president of Sephardic Bikur Holim, a social-services agency based in Gravesend.
Many Sephardic families spend their summers at second homes or with relatives in and around the shore town of Deal, N.J., where a small Sephardic community lives year-round. As New York City shut down in March and April, many families left Brooklyn to isolate near the Jersey Shore, often in large homes with spacious yards.
Communal officials set up a WhatsApp group that included about 100 doctors to monitor for suspected and confirmed cases in Brooklyn and New Jersey and to share information. They said people largely heeded health guidance on social distancing and by early summer Covid-19 cases had almost disappeared.
Then, on July 10, an umbrella organization for schools and religious groups, the Sephardic Community Alliance, circulated a letter from the doctors group warning of an uptick in cases. Some were in Brooklyn, but most were in the Deal area. The doctors urged people to heed health advice and to wear masks whenever social distancing wasn’t possible.
At that time in New Jersey, beaches up and down the shore were packed. Outdoor gatherings of up to 500 people were allowed by Gov. Phil Murphy. After a three-week religious period that prohibited Jewish celebrations ended in late July, Sephardic celebrations in and around Deal took off.
Sephardic couples had scaled down weddings throughout the pandemic, sometimes limiting guests only to close family, with everyone else attending via Zoom, said Mr. Aini, the Bikur Holim president. Though that tradition continued through the summer, he said, once outdoor restrictions were eased by the state, some people felt comfortable inviting more guests to outdoor events held under a canopy. By late August, people began to test positive and were attributing it to large events and gatherings, Mr. Aini said.
On Sept. 4, the Sephardic Community Alliance released a statement from the community doctors warning there had been more than 100 Covid-19 infections in Deal in the previous week alone, mostly among younger people whose symptoms were mild.
“What we are finding even more concerning,” the doctors’ statement said, “is that people with Covid-19 symptoms have been refusing to get tested, while those exposed to Covid-19 have not been isolating, knowingly putting others at risk.”
The Sephardic community leans conservative politically. Some communal officials felt that messages disseminated across conservative news outlets and social media, including by President Trump, played down the threat of the virus and the need to wear masks, leading some people to not take it seriously. To dispel myths circulating at the time, the doctors added that the virus hadn’t mutated into a milder strain and that the community hadn’t developed herd immunity.
New Jersey health officials said they aren’t aware of such a large number of cases in the Deal area at that time, possibly because of the way such cases are tracked. If a person being tested in New Jersey provides a home address in New York, officials said, that test would be logged as a New York case.
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Dr. Edward Lifshitz, medical director of the Communicable Disease Service for New Jersey’s health department, said that his department has communicated with New York City officials regarding cases that the city believes originated in Deal. A spokesman for New York City’s health department said some Brooklyn cases have been linked to New Jersey and that the department collaborates with neighboring health officials when there are known exposures.
Members of the Sephardic community started moving back to New York City around Labor Day and prepared for a return to school and Jewish holidays that began with the Jewish New Year on Sept. 18.
Mr. Aini said that because people would start mixing with families over the holidays, they were encouraged to get tested, even if they didn’t present symptoms. The result was a wave of positive tests.
By the end of September, two ZIP Codes with large Sephardic communities had the highest Covid positivity rates in the city, of 6.9% and 5.6%, helping, along with ultra-Orthodox communities nearby, to push the citywide average above 3% for the first time. On Oct. 2, the doctors released a statement that during the previous three days more than 50 community members in Deal, Manhattan and Brooklyn had been hospitalized and two had died.
Community leaders say some Sephardic schools and synagogues implemented stricter Covid-19 safeguards than the city and state required. Some synagogues moved services outdoors, while some yeshivas set up sneeze guards at desks and hired or trained staff for Covid-19 cleaning and contact tracing.
When city and state officials moved to close schools and essential businesses in Sephardic neighborhoods in October, there was a feeling in the community that they were being singled out despite their efforts at combating the virus. Some drew an unflattering comparison between the lawlessness they perceived as being permitted during the Black Lives Matter protests earlier this year and what they saw as the government’s heavy-handed actions against their community.
Community leaders worked with health officials to set up coronavirus testing sites in Brooklyn and New Jersey. They urged people to get tested. Dr. David Sitt, a volunteer within the community who has helped organize the testing effort, said tests conducted the week of Oct. 5 on 3,200 people in the Deal and Brooklyn areas returned a positivity rate of around 3%.
Meanwhile, Mr. Aini released a statement on Oct. 9 saying beliefs that government actions were a political stunt or evidence of anti-Semitic bias were dangerous because they caused people to be less vigilant.
“Over the course of the summer, we let our guard down and thought that we were all fine, but now we find ourselves once again in the midst of a pandemic crisis,” he said. “There is absolutely no good reason to not take proper precautions.”
—Emma Tucker contributed to this article.