De Blasio’s blunder
Rabbi Chaim Mertz of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, died of COVID-19 on Tuesday. His congregation, Tola’at Yaakov, sought to hold a funeral while keeping New York’s social distancing rules to curb the coronavirus’s spread. They coordinated with the NYPD, which blocked off streets in the area. The poster advertising the funeral told people to wear masks and keep two meters apart from one another.
But, as tends to happen at large events, things got out of control. The crowds grew, people stood too close together, some didn’t have masks. Police dispersed the event.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio heard about the funeral and decided to comment on it.
That he tweeted about this funeral was strange enough when taking into account what happened hours earlier: Thousands of New Yorkers – far more than at Rabbi Mertz’s funeral – gathered in parks around the city to watch a US Navy and Air Force flyover in honor of medical workers and no one broke up the crowds. A day earlier, de Blasio faced criticism for setting a bad example, as he continues to regularly travel to Prospect Park in Brooklyn to take walks, even though there is a ban on nonessential travel and his residence on the Upper East Side, Gracie Mansion, has its own park.
Even worse than the apparent double standard were the words of rebuke he chose: “My message to the Jewish community, and all communities, is this simple: the time for warnings has passed. I have instructed the NYPD to proceed immediately to summons or even arrest those who gather in large groups. This is about stopping this disease and saving lives. Period.”
De Blasio threatened “the Jewish community” as a whole. There are 1.5 million Jews in New York, the vast majority of whom has been keeping the guidelines. Yet the mayor chose to make a gross generalization based on a small group of people.
The generalization would not even be fair if he singled out hassidic Jews, who have been unfairly targeted in the media as if they are the only violators.
There have been repeated offenses in hassidic communities in Brooklyn, with synagogues holding secret prayer services and yeshivot holding underground classes. They should be condemned full-throatedly by their communities’ leaders and dealt with by the NYPD – though not any more harshly than any other group in New York’s diverse population. It also must be noted that there are courageous whistleblowers in the community reporting the violations to the authorities and in the media.
It is understandable that de Blasio would have lashed out after seeing the images of the funeral. Gatherings of those kinds need to be dealt with swiftly and forcefully. But at the same time, he needed to be wary of incriminating an entire community, the vast majority of which has abided and continues to abide by the city-imposed restrictions and rules of social distancing.
Additionally, as the Forward reported, since so many in the hassidic communities in Brooklyn recovered from COVID-19, large numbers of its members have been traveling to contribute plasma with antibodies in order to help others.
This is an especially perilous time to make such hurtful generalizations about the Jewish community or any part of it, since violent antisemitic attacks have been on the rise in New York in recent years.
On Thursday, de Blasio highlighted a tweet from the NYPD calling for the public to help find “individuals… wanted for an antisemitic hate crime,” saying: “This kind of loathsome hate has no home in our city.”
Unfortunately, though, it has found a home in New York for far too long.
Plus, as ADL head Jonathan Greenblatt tweeted at de Blasio: “Generalizing against the whole [Jewish] population is outrageous, especially when so many are scapegoating Jews.”
With the advent of COVID-19, conspiracy theories about Jews spreading the disease have abounded. This is shameful, yet unsurprising since Jews as disease-spreaders is a common trope by antisemites going back centuries.
De Blasio later apologized, saying: “If in my passion and in my emotion I said something that was hurtful, I’m sorry about that.”
Many Jewish community leaders in New York came out after the apology to say de Blasio is a friend and that he misspoke. Hopefully, they will take the time to educate him about why his rhetoric is potentially dangerous so he will be more cautious next time.