Friday, October 29, 2021
The Story of Hasidic Vilyamsburg
During the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a brief moment when thousands of people fled New York City, and market forces pushed rents and apartment-sales prices down, at least at the luxury end of the market. But it didn't last. A pandemic that sickened over a million New Yorkers and killed over 34,000 could only keep rents down for so long.
The city's post-COVID future will probably look much like its recent past.
There is probably no neighborhood more synonymous with New York's rise from a crime-ridden post-industrial metropolis to a high-rent playground than Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Historians Nathaniel Deutsch and Michael Casper offer a fresh take: Williamsburg's transformation as seen through the Hasidic Jewish experience. A Fortress in Brooklyn arrives on bookshelves as the pandemic seems to be abating, but it begins with another dark chapter — the surviving remnants of Hungary's Satmar Hasidim settling in Williamsburg after the Holocaust.
According to Deutsch and Casper, they only planned to stay in Vilyamsburg for a short time, as America was a "crazy country" full of assimilated Jews — they said the best profession was to be a painter, because "in America… everything is a lie, and people gloss over everything." The Satmars' start in industrial Williamsburg was so inauspicious that the sect quickly hatched plans to set up a shtetl in leafy New Jersey.
A Fortress in Brooklyn sets this stay-or-leave decision by a beleaguered Hasidic sect in a post-World War II outer-borough hinterland as a pivotal moment for the future Williamsburg. Jews had lived in the neighborhood for decades — the Williamsburg Bridge was nicknamed "Jew's Highway" because of migration from the Lower East Side after it opened in 1903 — but postwar economic policies encouraged suburban development at the expense of cities. Puerto Ricans settled in Williamsburg in the same era, but if thousands of Hasidim had pulled up stakes, it might have suffered even deeper decay and collapse. The book describes crime as a main factor for white flight to the suburbs, but it would do well to include the roles of public policy, housing discrimination, subsidized mortgages and urban divestment, which were more important before the 1960s.
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Thursday, October 28, 2021
As Pandemic Drove Judaism Online, Chabad Bet on Real Estate
Facing declining membership, a mainline Protestant congregation in Chicago's Lakeview neighborhood listed its historic church complex for sale in the summer of last year. Church leaders were told it would take at least a year to complete the deal. But within days, an attractive offer came in, and a few months later the building's $2.85 million sale closed.
The buyers were a pair of Chabad emissaries who had been serving Jews in the North Side neighborhood from their rented apartment since 2015. By converting the church complex, the Hasidic couple, Rabbi Dovid Kotlarsky and his wife Devorah Leah, could now realize their dream of expanding Chabad's footprint and establishing a synagogue and preschool.
According to Chabad.org, key to making the purchase was a $2 million donation from Chicago tax attorney Jaques Aaron Preis, who heads the Phillip Leonian and Edith Rosenbaum Leonian Charitable Trust. Preis was quoted as praising Chabad's "authenticity" and welcoming attitude.
The real estate transaction in Lakeview — a hub of Jewish life in Chicago, where large Reform, Conservative and Orthodox synagogues have long operated from stately buildings — represents just one of dozens of investments by Chabad in new buildings or in renovating and expanding existing properties.
In some regards, Chabad seems like an anomaly in the Jewish world. Many non-Orthodox Jewish institutions are unsure about what the future holds for their physical spaces after a year and a half of largely digital engagement — and after decades of declining synagogue membership for Judaism's largest American denominations. Chabad, meanwhile, whose strictly Orthodox emissaries seek followers from across the range of Jewish beliefs and practices, appears to be confident about its capacity to attract large numbers of people to its centers.
The movement has embarked on at least $137 million in real estate projects since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to numbers compiled by Chabad.org and reviewed by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
In Greenwich, Connecticut, the local Chabad paid $20 million to take over the site of a Jewish day school that closed last year. In Durham, North Carolina, a $3 million renovation of a historic inn — supported in part by Sarah Bloom Raskin, the Duke University law professor who is married to U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin — was dedicated last week. And the Chabad at the University of Illinois is spending more than $7 million to own and renovate a massive Tudor-style fraternity house.
Because the thousands of Chabad emissaries around the world fundraise independently, Chabad's news and public relations arm had to collect the data by gathering media reports and by carrying out an informal survey, according to Rabbi Motti Seligson, a Chabad spokesperson.
The survey turned up a number of capital projects that have not yet been publicly announced, including some purchases that are underway now. Seligson said the true extent of Chabad's recent real estate expansion is likely much larger than the $137 million figure indicates.
But he said he wanted to release the information he had in conjunction with the 38th annual International Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Emissaries, which takes place this week in-person in and around Brooklyn, New York. as well as virtually.
"We were doing an exploration of Chabad's impact and growth to examine the effectiveness of various programs through this difficult time of the pandemic," he said. "These numbers came into sharp focus as we looked at the level of engagement and our institutional and infrastructure growth."
Seligson also pointed out that during the pandemic, Chabad minted 250 new emissary couples who went out to serve existing Chabad centers or establish new ones.
Even before the pandemic growth spurt, Chabad had already engaged some 37% of American Jewish adults in activities, according to recent survey data from the Pew Research Center.
Over the past 20 years, the number of Chabad synagogues in the United States has nearly tripled, reaching 1,036 in 2020, according to a tally by Joel Kotkin, a Chapman University professor who studies demographic trends, and independent researcher Edward Heyman. Over that same period, the overall number of synagogues declined by 29%.
"While their secular counterparts are shrinking, the Hasidim and other more traditionally observant Jewish communities in America are experiencing a surge of growth," Kotkin and Heyman wrote in a Tablet magazine article analyzing their data.
While many Hasidic groups are growing primarily through procreation, Chabad, focused as it is on outreach, appears to be picking up a significant chunk of the Jews who have disaffiliated from the Reform or Conservative movements or who have never had much of an institutional affiliation to begin with. In its recent survey, Pew estimated that among Chabad participants, 24% are Orthodox, while 26% are Reform, 27% are Conservative, and 16% don't identify with any particular branch of Judaism.
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Tuesday, October 26, 2021
People Love Dead Jews
Something about the news reports in the wake of the December 10, 2019 shooting at a kosher grocery in Jersey City store bothered me at the time, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. Novelist Dara Horn, in her new collection of essays, "People Love Dead Jews: Reports From a Haunted Present," fingers it well.
She quotes the Associated Press report, which was picked up by many news outlets: "The slayings happened in a neighborhood where Hasidic families had recently been relocating, amid pushback from some local officials who complained about representatives of the community going door to door, offering to buy homes at Brooklyn prices."
Ms. Horn wonders why other cases of domestic terrorism, like against black churches or nightclubs, aren't similarly "contextualized" in an attempt to explain what motivated the murderer. And she muses further that "Like many homeowners, I too have been approached by real estate agents asking me if I wanted to sell my house. I recall saying, no, although I suppose murdering these people would also have made them go away."
That dagger of a comment is one of many marvelously acerbic observations in Ms. Horn's book.
Like her further observation on the Jersey City massacre, that when it comes to identifiably Jewish Jews, the crime for which they are persecuted, even killed, is the sheer audacity of "Jews, living in a place!"
Or like the story she tells at the book's beginning, about the Anne Frank museum in Amsterdam, about an employee who donned a yarmulke one day and was told to cover it with a baseball cap. The museum relented after four months' deliberation, which, Ms. Horn writes, "seems like a rather long time for the Anne Frank House to ponder whether it was a good idea to force a Jew into hiding."
Zing.
Anne Frank inspires a further observation from Ms. Horn, about the most famous quote from the young girl's diary, "I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart."
Ms. Horn: "It is far more gratifying to believe that an innocent dead girl has offered us grace than to recognize the obvious: Frank wrote about people being 'truly good at heart' three weeks before she met people who weren't."
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Monday, October 25, 2021
The Culture of Death Kills Alta Fixsler
Alta was alive and breathed on her own for 90 minutes after her breathing tube was removed," Rabbi Elisha Greenbaum wrote, stating the key fact as clearly as possible.
The United Kingdom wanted two-year-old Alta Fixsler, a severely disabled Hasidic girl, dead. The powers-that-be may not have put it that baldly, but they decided to end her life. Fixsler's parents wanted to bring her to Israel. There were offers from American and Israeli hospitals to try experimental treatments. But the medical establishment and the judiciary decided they knew best.
"According to Jewish law, everyone has the right to hydration, nutrition, and respiration, and the removal of that breathing tube was tantamount to murder," Rabbi Greenbaum wrote. "I can accept that others might have different views, yet how could contemporary society not reciprocally respect another perspective on what constituted Alta's best interest?"
And this is exactly the problem. We are living in a supposedly tolerant era — but tolerant only of the views that are trending.
A friend recently told me about an abortion in her family. The doctor advised it because the baby had many problems and was expected to die right away. But who are we to say that shouldn't happen naturally? Let the parents hold their child in their arms, if only for hours or minutes. The baby already is and always will be a part of their lives. It's a fear of suffering and sacrifice that makes abortion and physician-assisted suicide palatable, maybe even desirable. It's economics and ideology that drive a hospital and a court to decide — to insist — that a child be killed against the wishes of her parents. Alta was treated worse than we treat hardened criminals.
What was just done to Alta is a grave sin according to the Jewish law by which Abraham and Chaya Fixsler, Alta's parents, live their lives. By what authority does a court or a doctor negate their religious freedom and Alta's right to life? A judge reasoned that we don't actually know whether or not Alta would agree with the way the Fixslers chose to keep her alive.
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Friday, October 22, 2021
The national Sunrise movement says it did not have advance notice of DC affiliate’s broadside against Jewish groups
The Sunrise Movement, a national youth group devoted to advocating against human-caused climate change, said it did not have advance notice of a statement by its Washington D.C. affiliate calling for an end to associations with Jewish groups with ties to Israel.
"Sunrise Movement is a decentralized grassroots movement," the group said in a statement Thursday, in response to press queries, including from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
"Hundreds of hubs like Sunrise DC exist across the country powered by volunteers, and each of them has the ability to act independently — whether it's organizing protests, supporting candidates, or sending out public statements," the statement said. "Sunrise DC made a decision to issue this statement, and we weren't given the chance to look at it before it became public."
It was not clear from the statement where the national group stood on its Washington D.C. affiliate's call on progressive movements to cut off ties with three progressive Jewish groups, or how the group viewed the backlash, which included Jewish groups calling Sunrise DC's statement antisemitic.
"Our work on behalf of all humanity is rooted in the value of human dignity and we reject all forms of discrimination, including antisemitism and anti-Palestinian racism," the national Sunrise movement said. "As a national movement that supports freedom and dignity for all people, we will always welcome anyone who acts on our principles and chooses to join the fight for collective liberation. We believe that the rights of Palestinians are a part of that struggle and are committed to embracing that struggle together."
The national group's seeming equivocation infuriated the Reform movement's Religious Action Center, one of three groups targeted by Sunrise DC in its original statement.
"The failure of the Sunrise movement to speak clearly in condemnation of the offensive statement this week from their Sunrise DC hub that sought to erase the presence of the RAC, NCJW, and JCPA from the fight for voting rights, is shameful," said the RAC statement, referring both to itself and the two other targeted groups, the National Council of Jewish Women and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs.
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Wednesday, October 20, 2021
Ancient Jewish Prayer Book Sells for Record-Breaking $8.3 Million
A medieval Jewish prayer book sold for $8.3 million at the Sotheby's auction house on Tuesday, fetching the highest price ever paid for a Hebrew manuscript.
Known as the Luzzatto High Holiday Mahzor, the rare book is named after its former owner, a 19th-century scholar, theologian, poet and book collector by the name of Samuel David Luzzatto. It originated in Germany's Bavaria region in the late 13th or early 14th century. Over the years, the prayer book traveled to Italy and France.
In 1870, it was purchased by the Alliance Israelite Universelle, a Jewish cultural institution in France. Despite concerns that it would go to private hands, the institute said the move was necessary, citing financial debt.
Written by a scribe by the name of Abraham, the book includes several ancient versions of prayers that have since disappeared from Ashkenazi tradition. Its lavish illustrations and embellishments showcase the community's wealth.
The winning bid reportedly went to an anonymous American buyer.
Asked by Israel Hayom why Israel's National Library did not purchase the ancient text, a spokesperson said, "The National Library regularly examines existing sales in Israel and overseas and weighs each case individually."
The spokesperson noted that "the price for acquiring the Mahzor is very high and would require the enlistment of the state and donors to assist in such an acquisition."
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Tuesday, October 19, 2021
Brain-damaged girl, 2, dies weeks after failed bid to take her to Israel from UK
An Israeli girl at the centre of a court battle between her parents and the NHS over her care has died in a UK hospice after life support was withdrawn.
Alta Fixsler passed away on Monday evening, just weeks after her parents lost a legal fight to bring her out of hospital to their home in Salford, Greater Manchester.
Barristers for Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust had argued that life-sustaining care should be withdrawn in a hospital or hospice, not at the family residence.
Earlier this year, the UK High Court ruled that it was in Alta's "best interests" to end life support since she had "no prospect of recovery."
The child's parents Abraham and Chaya Fixsler, who are Hasidic Jews, were at her bedside when she died. The couple and their daughter are citizens of Israel.
They were accompanied by a minyan, or quorum of Jewish men, saying prayers, according to the ultra-Orthodox Hamodia newspaper.
The paper said Alta survived for 90 minutes after life-sustaining treatment was withdrawn.
"Sad news, little Alta Fixsler's life support was turned off this afternoon and she died at the hospice with her parents by her side," a representative for her parents said.
The family is reportedly planning to hold a funeral ceremony in Manchester before taking their child's remains to Israel for burial.
The little girl had been treated in palliative care in Manchester throughout her short life after suffering a brain injury at birth.
She was not able to breathe or eat without medical help.
The Fixslers had also wanted their daughter to be transferred to a hospital in Israel but were prevented by a court order from taking her.
The couple had argued it was their right as parents and as members of the Hasidic community to have the final say over their child's health care.
In June, after Britain's High Court rejected the Fixslers' bid to keep their daughter on life support and transfer her to Israel, the country's then president Reuven Rivlin intervened.
He issued a direct plea to Prince Charles to step in, calling the case "a matter of grave and urgent humanitarian importance."
He argued it was the "fervent wish" of Alta's parents, whom he described as "devoutly religious Jews and Israeli citizens", to bring their daughter to Israel.
"Their religious beliefs directly oppose ceasing medical treatment that could extend her life and have made arrangements for her safe transfer and continued treatment in Israel," he said.
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Monday, October 18, 2021
Guatemala blocks extremist ultra-Orthodox sect heading to Iran through Mexico
Guatemalan authorities stopped two buses carrying members of an extremist Jewish ultra-Orthodox sect from traveling across the border into Mexico, from where they were reportedly planning to reach Iran to seek asylum, Hebrew media reported Monday.
At the request of Israeli and US officials, who fear the Lev Tahor community could be used as a bargaining chip by Tehran, Guatemala has already prevented members from flying out of the country as they tried to head to the Islamic Republic.
The buses were stopped Sunday on their way to Mexico, where the passengers were apparently planning to board a plane to Kurdistan as a steppingstone to their final destination in Iran, the B'Hadrei Haredim website reported.
Video published by the website, which caters to the ultra-Orthodox community, showed women and children on one of the buses, which appeared to have been stopped on a main highway.
Members of the Lev Tahor group, which is anti-Zionist, applied for political asylum in Iran in 2018. Documents presented at a US federal court in 2019 showed that leaders of the fringe Hasidic cult requested asylum from the Islamic Republic and swore allegiance to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
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Friday, October 15, 2021
Jewish poverty, often hidden, common in Brooklyn
Brooklyn has the highest proportion of Jewish poverty in the New York metro area, with more than a quarter of borough Jews "poor or near poor." And among the groups with a higher proportion of poverty are elderly immigrants from the former Soviet Union, elderly Holocaust survivors (more than half of the metro area's estimated 38,000 live in Brooklyn), Hasidic and ultra-Orthodox Jews, and the disabled.
A "COVID-19 Impact Study" just released by the UJA-Federation of New York surveyed adults throughout the metropolitan area between February and May of 2021.
Looking at Brooklyn specifically, the study found that 13 percent of Jewish adults are "food-insecure," 8 percent in Brooklyn are behind in their rent.
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Wednesday, October 13, 2021
Haredi cult tries to go to Iran, sparks fears it may be used as bargaining chip
Israel and the US are working to prevent members of an extremist ultra-Orthodox sect from moving to Iran, amid fears they could be used as a bargaining chip by Tehran, it was reported Tuesday.
Members of the Lev Tahor group, which is anti-Zionist, applied for political asylum in Iran in 2018. Documents presented at a US federal court in 2019 showed that leaders of the fringe Hasidic cult requested asylum from Iran and swore allegiance to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
According to the Ynet news site, concerns were building that hundreds of members of the group, mainly based in Guatemala, could be trying to move to Iran after dozens of families were spotted at the airport in Guatemala, apparently on their way to the Kurdistan-Iran border.
The report said that relatives of the Israeli cult members had contacted the Foreign Ministry and Justice Ministry and asked them to urgently contact their Guatemalan counterparts to prevent the families from leaving. Relatives of American members were making similar requests to the US State Department.
"Reaching the Iran-Kurdistan border could cause a mega-political and security event," the relatives reportedly said.
"The Shalit deal will look like child's play next to this," they said, referring to the 2011 prisoner deal with Hamas in which Israel released 1,027 Palestinian terror convicts in exchange for soldier Gilad Shalit, who had been held captive since 2006.
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Tuesday, October 12, 2021
It’s a schtick up! NJ rabbi designs concealed-carry coat for Shabbat
This rabbi is really proud of his new "piece" of clothing.
Rabbi Raziel Cohen of Morris County, NJ, has designed a $550 kapota — the long jacket donned by married Hasidic men on Shabbat and holidays — meant to comfortably conceal a gun.
After he got married about two years ago and graduated to wearing a kapota, "I realized right away it was a problem," said Cohen, 24, of the cumbersome garment, which is traditionally fashioned with buttons and a belt known as a gartel.
The issue: He couldn't easily pull out the Glock 19 or Glock 17 he always wears during synagogue.
"When you draw a gun, you have to do it safely, quickly and efficiently — ensuring that it's not a risk to the person drawing the gun or to those around him," said Cohen, an NRA-certified firearms instructor.
So he designed a "Tactical Kapota" with quick-access snaps hidden under a decoy version of the buttons traditionally required for the jacket.
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Friday, October 08, 2021
Jews, drugs and rock ’n’ roll: The Jewish stories behind a heavy metal cult classic film
The Star of David pendant comes exactly 15 minutes into the 16.5-minute documentary.
It bounces against the chest of a guy with big hair who's prancing in front of his girlfriend, who has equally big hair. He's wearing suspenders over a bare torso, and he has something to say about this moment in 1986, in a suburban Maryland parking lot, where fans of the rock band Judas Priest are waiting to get "f**ked up," as several documentary subjects and one of the filmmakers put it.
"Let's rock, OK, all right!" says the big-haired guy, as the Jewish symbol bounces in and out of the frame.
Thirty-five years later, that man, who was once known as Robbie Ludwick, has a different take.
"When I listen to heavy metal, I don't see the hand of God," says Zev Zalman Ludwick, a member of the Breslov Hasidic sect who lives a quiet life in the Maryland suburbs. Instead of pregaming in parking lots, Ludwick now mends damaged violins and tends koi fish in his backyard about a 20-minute drive from the long-demolished Capital Centre, where he saw Judas Priest perform on Memorial Day weekend in 1986.
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Thursday, October 07, 2021
For Orthodox Jews and Israelis, WhatsApp outage highlighted basic community infrastructure — and its vulnerability
Asher Lovy was expecting a flood of notifications on Monday morning when he posted information about a sexual abuse case to several WhatsApp chat groups devoted to tracking the work of his organization, which provides support to survivors of sexual abuse within the Orthodox community.
Instead, he heard nothing. WhatsApp, the Facebook-owned messaging app he uses, was down, along with Facebook and Instagram, three of the most widely used social platforms in the world.
"I was worried that people who were trying to reach us wouldn't be able to," Lovy said. He began to worry about what would happen if the outage extended later into the week, when Za'akah would ready its mental health hotline for Orthodox Jews who have crises on Shabbat, when many other services are closed or inaccessible.
"We have people contacting us on WhatsApp to get referrals for resources for therapists or lawyers, or just to talk and receive support," he said. "I get texts at 2 o'clock, 3 o'clock in the morning from people in crisis who need support or resources, who do they reach out to if not us? … The thought of Whatsapp going down on Shabbos is terrifying."
Lovy's fears did not come to pass: WhatsApp was back up after eight hours, along with Facebook and Instagram. But the outage, which Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said was the most significant interruption in service in years, brought into sharp focus the degree to which WhatsApp is baked into the communication infrastructure for most of the world's Jews — and how vulnerable that infrastructure may be.
With more than 2 billion users worldwide, WhatsApp is by far the most widely used instant messaging service in the world. Its simple platform, which works even on older flip phones, is the communication standard in many countries in Africa and the Middle East, and its early adoption in Israel and the relative unpopularity of iPhones there means it remains the country's text messaging app of choice.
In the United States, its dominance is perhaps most clear in the haredi Orthodox world.
Even as Orthodox rabbis were warning about the dangers to religious life posed by WhatsApp way back in 2014, as Facebook began to consider acquiring the platform, the app became popular in Orthodox communities as an easy way to communicate. "The rabbis overseeing divorces say WhatsApp is the No. 1 cause of destruction of Jewish homes and business," the Hasidic newspaper Der Blatt reported in Yiddish that year. Its dominance in the communities only increased over time, with misinformation and anti-mask activism spreading quickly through group-text channels that were already well established before the pandemic.
It's not just rumors that take hold on Orthodox WhatsApp chats. "We run all our groups of employees on various businesses through WhatsApp," said Mordy Getz, a community leader who owns a health clinic and Judaica store in Borough Park, Brooklyn.
A unique confluence of factors drives the penetration and lasting power of WhatsApp in Orthodox communities.
Many community members have filters on their phones to prevent them from accessing external websites and social media platforms, so they receive all their information through WhatsApp, according to Getz. (This creates its own problems, as misinformation can circulate easily and quickly without the ability to fact-check.)
What's more, WhatsApp's integrated voice notes option allows people with wide-ranging skills in written language to communicate with each other, a potential issue in communities where critics have charged that yeshivas do not always leave graduates with a strong secular education.
And WhatsApp video and phone calls don't carry long distance calling fees. For Jewish families in which some members are Orthodox and others are not, or some members live in Israel and others in the Diaspora, WhatsApp can serve as a vital convening ground.
"Every Orthodox Jew has people in Israel and Europe," said Getz. "You have to have WhatsApp if you want to talk to them."
When that stops working, the distance can feel greater.
Orli Gal, a Philadelphia nurse, said her family, which includes people in Israel and across the United States, would have been celebrating a milestone in her sister's medical training over WhatsApp Monday when the outage cut off their communications.
"We've got people all over the world, and some of them are pretty elderly. This is the only way they know how to get in touch," she said. "WhatsApp is the only thing that connects us all."
Mendel Horowitz, a therapist and teacher in Jerusalem, was suddenly unable to be in touch with his 20-year-old son, Alty, who was vacationing in Egypt's Sinai Desert with friends.
"I don't want to say I was up all night worried because I wasn't," he said. "But it was on our minds that this is the only way to reach him and we can't."
The outage got Horowitz thinking about his own family's reliance on WhatsApp and whether it was wise given the app's vulnerabilities. "It's not an emergency, but it gets us thinking about the next time somebody goes somewhere, we should have a plan B," he said.
Horowitz wasn't alone.
If WhatsApp were to disappear, "there would be no backup infrastructure" for communication within the Orthodox community, said Lovy.
The outage, Gal said, "mostly made me rethink: Why did we allow Facebook to buy it in the first place?"
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Wednesday, October 06, 2021
Research team looks into COVID-19's effect on Orthodox Jewish community in Montreal area
Shalom Grunwald, who owns a bagel shop near one of Montreal's Orthodox Jewish communities, says the pandemic hasn't been easy.
Not just because of the illness in the community, but also all the health regulations that came with it.
"We do go three times a day to synagogue and that's something we couldn't do at the time," he said. "We had to close down the synagogue."
That type of experience is part of what researchers are looking into as they study how COVID-19 affected Orthodox Jews in the greater Montreal area — a community that was hit hard by the virus.
"It's to look at the strength of immunity in the Orthodox community and also to see what lessons can be learned for the future out of their experiences out of the pandemic," said Dr. Peter Nugus.
He's with Canada's COVID-19 Immunity Task Force and the lead investigator of the study that will be looking at everything linked to the spread of the disease in the community.
That includes "their level of trust in particular institutions and in health services — also their beliefs around vaccinations," he said.
In March 2020, early on in the pandemic, the entire Hasidic community in Boisbriand, Que., was quarantined after an outbreak of the virus. That outbreak was linked to travel to New York City for Purim, a Jewish holiday.
Côte Saint-Luc, which has a large population of Jews, had Montreal's highest per-capita COVID-19 case count in March 2021. Outremont had the highest rate in September 2020.
Beyond the outbreaks, there were tensions between authorities and some Jewish communities, such as that in Boisbriand where police broke up a large holiday gathering in October 2020.
The Hasidic Jewish council in Montreal challenged Quebec's curfew, but also encouraged members to stop gathering back in January.
Nugus said he will be looking at the rates of infection and talking to the members of the community to understand their experiences.
The goal of the study is to be better prepared for new outbreaks and future viruses. Nugus said this project will focus on the Jewish community, but in the long term, he's hoping it can help other communities.
The study is still in the early stages and it will be a few months before anything is released.
"I think a big lesson is going to be that one size doesn't fit all when it comes to policy and there are lessons that can be shared," said Nugus.
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Tuesday, October 05, 2021
Airmont revising village laws relieves Orthodox and Hasidic residents, angers others
The Board of Trustees amended or repealed six village laws that members of the Orthodox and Hasidic Jewish communities felt were discriminatory, following a series of contentious hearings.
The mayor and trustees received push-back from secular residents who demanded to know the rationale and details for the changes. The board members also were praised by Orthodox and Hasidic Jewish speakers for taking action against the laws, created by the prior administration.
The board, during its virtual meeting Monday, also declined to remove Deputy Mayor Brian Downey, involving the possession of unregistered rifles, shotguns, weapons parts like silencers, and fake law enforcement badges.
The changes included revising weekend times for property maintenance, such as mowing lawns; limiting the use of power tools; revising rules for non-car uses for garages; setting new standards for tree clearing, and ending a ban on overnight parking during the summer and autumn months.
Another change lifts a provision in which residents and political candidates were warned about illegal contributions made under the names of other people. Previous law already mandated candidates report their donations to the village clerk's office. The mayor and his team didn't report their donations.
During the nearly four hours of hearings, speakers argued the board held the meeting on zoom for fear of being confronted. Some speakers spoke multiple times during the six hearings.
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