Hasidic Jews clashed with police on Sunday as a large group filled a street in New York City to mourn the death of a rabbi who reportedly died of the coronavirus on Saturday.
The funeral, one of at least two public Hasidic gatherings this weekend, was held in honor of 78-year-old Rabbi Meir Rokeach. As mourners walked through the streets, police blared sirens and public health warnings at them, according to the New York Post.
“This is not 6 feet,” said a police officer over a loudspeaker as people walked by him. One man was seen approaching the police to apologize.
As police played recorders describing public health ordinances, mourners asked for more time to remember the dead before dispersing. “Wanting to be respectful,” police gave them about five minutes of silence before turning the recordings back on, according to a police spokesperson.
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The crowd eventually dispersed, and no arrests were made.
A similar confrontation happened about a mile away from the first funeral. Hasidic Jews, some wearing protective masks, gathered to mourn in another outdoor funeral procession. Police also broke up that event.
The events occurred just days after a video of another Hasidic funeral, for a 96-year-old Holocaust survivor, went viral. On Saturday, police in New Jersey arrested 15 people at the funeral of Chaim Moshe Strulovics, an Orthodox rabbi who had tested positive for the virus.
New York firefighters in March broke up a Hasidic wedding with more than 200 people. The wedding was celebrated “exactly how it would have been if there hadn’t been any kind of a pandemic,” according to a musician who played at the event.
As the coronavirus pandemic has worsened, city officials and many Orthodox Jewish leaders have cracked down on public events. Dov Hikind, a former New York Democratic assemblyman, told the Washington Examiner that his fellow Orthodox Jews need to comply with city orders for public health reasons.
“If you congregate and there’s a funeral, there’s hundreds of people. If there’s a wedding, hundreds of people show up,” he said. “And when there’s a synagogue, you’ve got to pray, hundreds of people go to the synagogue and pray. You are going to murder people, ultimately. That’s what you’re going to do. People are going to die.”
