Many Jewish leaders in New York and New Jersey are reporting that they are experiencing more pronounced incidents of anti-Semitism as coronavirus lockdowns lengthen.
The complaints reached fever pitch Tuesday night when New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio tweeted about how he personally broke up a heavily attended Orthodox funeral in Brooklyn. The mayor, who had previously provoked controversy when he said that he might “permanently” close noncompliant synagogues, said further violations of social distancing will not “be tolerated.”
“My message to the Jewish community, and all communities, is this simple: the time for warnings has passed,” he wrote. “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.”
After backlash, de Blasio apologized Wednesday morning, saying that his tweet was “said with love” but “tough love.”
Deborah Lipstadt, a professor at Emory University who specializes in studying anti-Semitism, told the Washington Examiner that the crisis could have been avoided. By condemning an entire community, she said, de Blasio’s tweet stoked anti-Semitism in the city and online, when the mayor just as well could have only addressed the specific incident.
“Had he not sent that tweet, we would be asking how could 2,500 Hasidim, a community that has been ravaged by the virus, do something so thoughtless to their families, their community, and, above all, to the healthcare workers who have to take care of them,” Lipstadt said. “Instead, we are talking about a stupid, thoughtless, and anti-Semitic-inducing tweet from the mayor.”
Throughout de Blasio’s tenure, the mayor has received criticism for a spike in anti-Semitic hate crimes reported within the city. More than 500 violent incidents have been reported in the city since the New York City Police Department started collecting data in 2017. De Blasio, at one point in 2019, chalked up the rise to “the right-wing movement.”
The city’s Human Rights Commission announced in February that it was launching a campaign to combat the threat of anti-Semitism, taking out ads in newspapers and pushing anti-hate messages on social media.
“We will never tolerate a climate where wearing a yarmulke in public makes anyone a target,” Human Rights Commissioner Jonathan Greenspun said at the time.
But Jewish communities in both New York and the New Jersey suburbs reported a sharp spike in hostility both in the streets and online once governments began implementing shutdowns.
The incidents have been particularly pronounced in Lakewood, New Jersey, which is home to a large Orthodox community. Members of the community have reported a consistent stream of threats from people suspicious that Jewish people are not social distancing. In late March, police arrested a man who threatened to assault Jews in Lakewood with a baseball bat.
Many threats against Jews came after several videos went viral depicting Orthodox communities holding large weddings or funerals despite shutdown orders. Police arrested 15 people in early April during a funeral in Lakewood. Only days later, New York police broke up two similar funerals in Brooklyn, without making any arrests.
At the time, many Jewish leaders warned people breaking shutdown orders that they would invite anti-Semitism, as well as spread the coronavirus.
“If you congregate and there’s a funeral, there’s hundreds of people. If there’s a wedding, hundreds of people show up,” Dov Hikind, a former New York Democratic assemblyman, told the Washington Examiner. “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.”
A report released in late April by the Kantor Center at Tel Aviv University, which studies anti-Semitism worldwide, found that since the pandemic began, anti-Semitism has become a serious issue.
At the report’s presentation, Moshe Kantor, president of the European Jewish Congress, said that the pandemic has inspired a revival “of the medieval ‘blood libels,’ when Jews were accused of spreading disease, poisoning wells, or controlling economies.”
“As unemployment numbers will begin to spiral out of control, more people may seek out scapegoats, spun for them by conspiracy theorists,” Kantor said. “Our leaders need to address the problem of growing extremism and hate now to get ahead of the problem that is already at our door.”
