New York City has fined a Brooklyn synagogue thousands of dollars after keeping a wedding, with thousands of guests set to attend, hidden from authorities who would’ve forbade it from happening.
Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the $15,000 fine on Monday night, weeks after thousands packed into the Yetev Lev temple in South Williamsburg to celebrate the wedding of Yoel Teitelbaum, grandson of Satmar Grand Rabbi Aaron Teitelbaum, on Nov. 8. The identity of the younger Teitelbaum’s wife is unknown publicly. The New York Post obtained video footage from the wedding showing the pews crammed with people without a mask in sight.
“We know there was a wedding,” the mayor told the local news network NY1. “We know it was too big. I don’t have an exact figure, but whatever it was, it was too big. There appeared to be a real effort to conceal it. Which is absolutely unacceptable.”
“We’ve been through so much,” de Blasio added. “And in fact, the Williamsburg community in recent weeks responded very positively, did a lot more testing, and was being very responsible. This was amazingly irresponsible, just unacceptable. So there’s going to be consequences right away for the people who let that happen.”
The organizers of the wedding reportedly went out of their way to keep the details of the wedding quiet, so authorities would not find out that they were flaunting the city’s COVID-19 restrictions.
In the days after the wedding, the Yiddish newspaper Der Blatt, the publication of the Satmar sect, gave a detailed account on how the wedding “organizers worked tirelessly to arrange everything” in a discreet way “so as to not draw attention from strangers,” according to the New York Post.
The Orthodox Jewish community and New York City authorities have clashed for months amid COVID-19 restrictions. As cases spiked in the city, Gov. Andrew Cuomo declared “red zone” shutdown rules in an effort to contain the spread. He blamed the Orthodox community, which is prevalent in Brooklyn and Queens neighborhoods, for the outbreak, drawing backlash and lawsuits from Jewish leaders in response.
