Less than two months after using Twitter to reprimand the Jewish community for violations of social-distancing regulations at a ḥasidic funeral—which occurred with permission from municipal authorities—New York’s Mayor Bill de Blasio ordered that the gates of public parks be welded shut, ostensibly to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. But most of these parks were in neighborhoods with large populations of Orthodox Jews, while parks in other areas were left open to the public. This act of discrimination, writes Eliezer Brand, comes on the heels of many insults to the city’s Ḥaredim:
Last week, for example, the New York Police Department was largely absent as stores across the city were being burned and looted during protests. Yet they somehow had plenty of units available to chase Jewish mothers out of the city’s parks with their kids in tow. It was a stunning double standard, doubly insulting after de Blasio allowed and even participated in the massive protests. Thousands and thousands of New Yorkers marching in the streets was fine for de Blasio, but a few dozen ḥasidic mothers in a park was too much to bear.
De Blasio, indeed, was photographed at the protests without wearing a mask. Moreover, Brand notes, his callousness toward Orthodox Jews was evident even before the pandemic:
All of last year, the mayor failed to do anything about the daily anti-Semitic attacks that occurred across the city—and this not for lack of being asked. . . . Only when Jews were murdered in New Jersey and Rockland County and there was a national spotlight on the issue did de Blasio acquiesce and temporarily increase patrols. And after the media attention went away, so did the extra police patrols, though of course now they are back—to break up ḥasidic funerals.
Read more on Forward: https://forward.com/opinion/448979/de-blasio-just-lost-the-orthodox-it-was-a-long-time-coming