PAIN IN THE CLASS
Kid-filled B’klyn yeshiva shirks lockdown laws
Mayor de Blasio said city plans to issue a cease-and-desist order against yeshiva in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, where 60 students were found in the building.
A Brooklyn yeshiva was open for classes and filled with more than 60 children Monday in defiance of the state’s coronavirus lockdown orders, eliciting a scolding and threat of a cease-and-desist order from Mayor de Blasio.
Officers from the NYPD’s 81st Precinct arrived at the Nitra Yeshiva on Madison St. near Ralph Ave. in Bedford-Stuyvesant about noon and ordered the man running the Orthodox Jewish school to shut it down.
The cops made no arrests and issued no summonses, though Mayor de Blasio said the city plans to issue a cease-and-desist order.
“Earlier today the NYPD shut down a yeshiva conducting classes with as many as 70 children. I can’t stress how dangerous this is for our young people,” Hizzoner tweeted. “We’re issuing a cease-and-desist order and will make sure we keep our communities and our kids safe.”
In a later interview on NY1, the mayor said police are “going to watch … regularly” those locations where crowds are broken up “to make sure it never reasserts.” He added such gatherings are “extremely rare.”
“Where they happen, we’re going to stop them. If anyone tries to come back, they’re asking for a summons. … It will be dealt with, there’s no question about that,” he added.
The officers were checking up on a 311 complaint about a lack of social distancing at the school, a two-story building that once housed a small distribution company.
“There were boys up on the roof, and a neighbor called it in,” said Earl Covington, 71, a plumber who lives across the street.
He said he saw far more students than the 60 kids that police reported.
“Two police units showed. They evacuated the building and brought out about two busloads worth of kids … maybe a hundred,” he said.
“It wasn’t the usual buses that dropped the kids off, but a different, private outfit to get them out of here. They should have been more considerate of the neighborhood. They should have observed the protocols of the times of COVID-19.”
The cease-and-desist order will be issued by the city Health Department and served by the sheriff ’s office, officials said.
It’s expected to read that the school violates the city and state executive order banning nonessential gatherings, and that failure to comply will be a misdemeanor violation of the city’s health code punishable by fines, forfeitures and imprisonment.
Naftuli Moster, an activist who runs Yaffed, an organization critical of the education standards in the city’s yeshivas, said the school should have followed the same rules shuttering every other school in the state.
“Talmud says ‘the law of the land is the law,’ ” he said. “Yeshiva leaders need to restore a culture of compliance with state and local laws. This applies to all guidelines pertaining to children’s health and educational wellbeing. “
A message left on the school’s voice mail was not immediately returned.
Police have responded to several large gatherings in the city’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods, where thousands have flooded the streets for funerals at the height of the coronavirus pandemic.
On April 28, a crowd estimated at several thousand people thronged the streets of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to mourn the death of a prominent rabbi in defiance of social-distancing rules. Police issued 12 summonses to mourners for various offenses, including disorderly conduct.
De Blasio drew criticism from Orthodox Jewish leaders for his response to the funeral — who noted that other gatherings in city parks, including of those who came out to watch a Blue Angels and Thunderbirds flyover earlier that day — hadn’t been broken up.