Don’t make Jews a scapegoat, Hasidic leader pleads
Jewish leaders called on citizens and police forces to be wary of making their communities the scapegoats for the COVID -19 crisis as unwarranted denunciations and anti-semitic incidents rise in Montreal.
The Jewish community in Quebec has been hit hard by COVID -19, in part because of Purim religious celebrations on March 9 and 10, just before Quebec’s lockdown was declared, and because of close ties to members of the Jewish community in the state of New York that has been one of the hardest hit in the United States.
The heightened awareness has led to police being called to Outremont synagogues three times in less than a week based on reports Hasidic Jews were congregating inside in defiance of public health orders. Most recently, police were called to a synagogue on Bernard Ave. Thursday night after firefighters reported seeing more than 50 people gathered, an incident reported in the media.
“In each case it was false,” said Alain Picard, a spokesman for the Council of Hasidic Jews of Quebec. “Police came and found there was no one in the synagogues.” The supposed gathering was likely people lined up at a nearby Jewish grocery store, Picard said.
The community issued strict orders on March 18 to close all synagogues for prayers or gatherings, the first time in the council’s history such an order has been made. But administrators and cleaners are still allowed inside synagogues, and people who have seen lights on indoors or seen members of the community lining up at nearby grocery stores have called police.
“If there are some who are gathering or praying in groups, we are the first to say, ‘Yes, denounce them, and let them get the fines they deserve,’ ” Picard said. “But people especially in Outremont had a tendency to associate Jews with the disease, to the point that they denounce anything at all. So we ask them, and especially the police,
to be careful. You have to stop stigmatizing us. We don’t want to be the scapegoats.”
In Outremont, home to thousands of Montreal’s easily recognizable Hasidic Jewish community, there are reports of people being yelled at in the street, or of Jews not allowed into stores and being told to stick to their “Jewish stores,” Picard said. “It’s a normal human reaction to be scared, but we say that this is a secular virus. It strikes everyone regardless of religion, colour, language or age.”
Picard noted that in Boisbriand, where the Tosh Jewish community of 4,000 people was quarantined this week after 27 members tested positive for COVID-19, Jews were being force to stay inside their homes by police and could not go out to shop or go for walks, even if they weren’t symptomatic, contrary to public health directives. On Friday, Boisbriand Mayor Marlene Cordato announced 43 members of the Tosh community are infected.
The Council of Hasidic Jews of Quebec confirmed that Michael Rosenberg, the Hasidic Jewish owner of the Rosdev real estate development companies, one of Montreal’s largest, has tested positive for COVID -19 and has been in critical care for several days.
He attended the marriage of his niece at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Dorval on March 16, with hundreds in attendance, including many from New York. Several guests have contracted the coronavirus. Rosenberg ’s company owns the Crowne Plaza Hotel.
Staff who worked for the wedding told the Montreal Gazette the initial size of the wedding was pared down significantly to fall in line with Quebec’s ban on gatherings of more than 250 people, issued on March 12, but that there were still close to 200 in attendance with staff factored in.