I'll be a beggar again. Can someone please copy/paste here?
TIA!
Amy, this is a lot more complex than you make it out to be.
I'm going to try to explain our viewpoint, this will be long.
1) I don't think De Blasio or Cuomo hate Jews. I DO think that they are using us as pawns in their never-ending petty fight to show who has more control.
(1 2) I know that their outrageous rhetoric & behavior is definitely causing an increase in anti semitism.
There have already been a few incidents of harassment and violence that can be directly tied to their actions.
(cont) 3) People act like Hassidic/Ultra Orthodox are stupid, anti-science, and don't care about anyone else.
We are not. Our community includes brilliant people, medical practitioners, mental health professionals, businessmen who've built empires on only a high school education.
(cont) Our resistance to certain things comes from a deeper place.
4) Our experiences through centuries have exile has ingrained in us not to rely on government to take care of us. It has taught us to use our own experts and common sense, especially when faced with extreme laws. (cont) 5) Now let's talk about how this impacted our reaction to Covid.
On March 1, Cuomo announced the 1st confirmed case in NYC. He spent the next few days telling everyone they were worrying to much, the reality is reassuring, etc.
bit.ly/3nORxzH 6) Cuomo attended a rally on March 3. He told us on March 6 “We have more people in this country dying from the flu than we have dying from coronavirus.”
On March 7, he signed the 1st EO declaring a State of Emergency, yet on the 8th he STILL said not to worry, go on the subway 7) March 9-10 mark the holiday of Purim. There was some talk about maybe limiting gatherings in the Jewish community, but based on Cuomo's words, it was mostly waved off.
Why interrupt our most joyous holiday for a virus Cuomo insisted wasn't bad?
After Purim, cases started EXPLODING in our community. And this was no surprise. We had just spent two days going from house to house, having crowded parties, the ultimate "super-spreader" events.
So some schools and synagogues closed down even before De Blasio's orders. 9) From that time until the end of April, 95% of the community followed every restriction to a T. We stayed locked in our tiny apartments with our large families, our kids were doing PHONE school because many don't use home internet 9 (cont) - Young mothers made Passover at home for the first time because they couldn't go to their parents, something which is a HUGE undertaking, all with under-stocked stores. You literally had to comb the shelves for convection ovens. 9 (cont) All this while dealing with the severe anxiety and fear of hearing about new deaths of relatives, friends and acquaintances on a daily basis. 10) Then, as quickly as things had exploded, they quieted down. By May, there were barely any new cases in the community, and they soon dwindled to 0.
Yet were any restrictions lifted? No. Not even outdoor public parks were permitted to reopen! Something that made no sense. 10 (cont) We begged to be allowed to open by zipcode. But Cuomo and DeBlasio refused. "Only by region, it can spread." (Sounds very different than the way they're talking now, huh?) 11) At this point, seeing that we were dealing with unreasonable people not acting based on science, we lost all trust in them.
Families were suffering, kids were traumatized, businesses were collapsing - yet no changes were made. 12) Summer arrived and life went back to normal. Camps and day camps reopened, people went upstate - and still, there were no new cases.
DESPITE the extreme laxity with mask wearing and social distancing.
For the moment, at least, the virus was gone. 13) September came and cases started appearing again. This was the start of the long predicted "second wave". Yet this was very unlike the first wave.
Cases were mild, there were very few hospitalizations. 14) Then suddenly, on Yom Kippur when we couldn't even listen to news, Cuomo announced the official uptick in cases (once again, weeks late - there had been an uptick for a long time already.) 14 (cont) People understood that things had changed, and there was a noticeable uptick in mask wearing and distancing in the community. But given the still low positivity rate, we saw no reason for panic and shutting down shuls and schools - which for us, are essential. 15) Then on October 6th, in middle of our holiday of Sukkos, Cuomo made his new EO creating deeply confusing and entirely unscientific color coded hot spots based on some logic only he seemed to understand.
This order included a SPECIFIC houses of worship clause. And this clause capped synagogue gatherings at 10, no matter the size of the building (some can seat thousands!)
16) On a call with community leaders, Cuomo admitted outright that this was a "fear driven response" not based on science 16 (cont) , and that schools were NOT the cause of the uptick.
He also said, on that call, that synagogues would be capped at 50% capacity, and asked leaders to encourage compliance to masks and distancing. Of course everyone agreed to these reasonable sounding things. 17) Yet the very next day, he announced that there would be a limit of TEN in synagogues, and that schools would be closed.
Despite the fact that he himself said schools weren't the problem! Despite what he had told leaders the day before! 17 (cont) To add insult to the injury, he kept publically pointing to us as the CAUSE of the uptick, despite the facts that there were upticks in many neighborhoods with no Orthodox Jewish presence.
He made some outrageous, horrific remarks that echo ancient Jewish hate themes
18) Don't forget that this is coming after a year in which we faced horrific attacks on our community. The machette attack in Monsey, tens of violent attacks on the streets of Brooklyn.
Yet here goes Cuomo, once again putting a target on our backs. 18 (cont) This would be awful EVEN if his claims of this only being an "ultra-Orthodox cluster" were true - when it is patently false.
Community leaders and elected officials begged Cuomo to reverse course, but he just doubled down and threatened to cut funding. 19) Now that it was clear what kind of attitude we were dealing with - that he was literally going to war with our community - we said, "No way are we letting him trample us. Time to fight back."
Hence, the outcry you hear from us. Here is one of the FIVE lawsuits filed this week against Cuomo. You'll get even more details about Cuomo's duplicitous, unconstitutional and hateful behavior.
20201014_CAL_Congregation_Doc_1_Comp (1).pdf https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dWB-j_YQHHfC0HV00adImYW11egISObk/view 