Chassidic Jews feel like the only minority New York officials feel comfortable targeting
My latest article appears in Religion News Service.
“We’re an easy target. The last remaining group that it’s acceptable to target and vilify are Orthodox Jews,” Barry Spitzer, who represents the Brooklyn neighborhood Borough Park and is the first Chassidic district manager in the state, told me in an interview recently. “There is no group in the entire country that it’s acceptable to make fun of, belittle, malign, and smear as Orthodox Jewish people.”
I quote Spitzer—as well as Susannah Heschel of Dartmouth College, Moshe Krakowski of Yeshiva University, and Rabbi Marc Schneier of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding—in my latest Religion News Service article “Chassidic Jews feel like the only minority New York officials feel comfortable targeting.”
(Another recent RNS piece of mine focused on how “High Holy Days during COVID-19 mean financial, spiritual challenges for synagogues.”)
I conducted several lengthy interviews for the piece about Chassidim, and per usual, a lot of good things had to be left on the cutting room floor. I may develop some of that material into another article, but here’s one interesting thread.
Chassidim in Borough Park. Wikipedia/Credit: Flickr user Jonund.
Spitzer told me that Chassidim gave up weddings and funerals and closed schools when the pandemic hit their communities particularly hard, and he added that many Chassidim have tested positive for COVID-19 antibodies.
On High Holidays a few weeks ago, Chassidic synagogues told at-risk constituents and those with symptoms to stay home. If photographs or videos emerge from Simchas Torah of unmasked people dancing (in hakafos circles) with the Torah, those will be people with antibodies, he told me.
“If you see a picture, you’re probably going to see a whole bunch of young people dancing hakafos. It’s going to be people who either have antibodies,” he said, “or they feel fine, they’re young, and none of them would be symptomatic, because they’re forbidden from coming into shul (synagogue).”
“Yes. It’s going to be hakafos, because hakafos have to happen. This is the highlight of the year. This is the culmination of the holiday, the culmination of the High Holidays,” he added. “But they will have hakafos responsibly. The picture will not tell the story.”
The notion that pictures of Chassidim don’t tell their full story the way they want it told is fascinating to me. Of course, it also raises a lot of ethical questions, to which I may return in a subsequent piece.