The draconian rules limiting synagogue attendance to 10 people regardless of the synagogue’s size is just one more example of the inequitable treatment that New York City’s Jewish community has received from a recalcitrant administration apparently intent on preventing Jews from gathering. At the same time that synagogues are mostly shuttered, even during the high holy days, the city was already allowing indoor dining at restaurants and indoor retail stores to operate with few limits.
A focus of community life, synagogues are crucial to the spiritual and social life of the Jewish community. Many of them are large, with some able to accommodate 5,000 occupants, yet, even these are kept to a maximum of 10. At the same time synagogues are closed to much of the community the city has encouraged unlimited attendance at organized street protests against the police.
Despite the discriminatory treatment, the courts offer little hope to the Jewish community. While the Trump administration has given strong support to religious freedom arguments brought by faith communities and their advocates, the courts have refused to help. In fact, the Supreme Court has ruled twice in the past few months against churches that sought exemptions from statewide COVID restrictions on houses of worship. In each case, Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the liberal wing of the court in allowing such discrimination. Justice Neil Gorsuch, in his dissenting remarks in a Nevada Calvary Chapel case, quipped, “In Nevada, it seems it is better to be in entertainment than religion.” He then added, “But the First Amendment prohibits such obvious discrimination against the exercise of religion.”
It is clear that the zip code restrictions are intended to target the Jewish community unfairly. They appear to be opening the door to anti-Semitism, leaving the Jewish residents of those zip codes vulnerable to hateful attacks. Earlier this year, the Black Hebrew Israelites, a hate group, inspired some of the most deadly acts of violence against Jews in New York, including a machete attack on a rabbi, his family, and his friends while they prayed in a Hanukkah celebration.
According to the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish community experienced historic levels of anti-Semitism last year, with a total 1,879 attacks against Jews and Jewish institutions, marking the third-highest year since the ADL starting tracking such data in the 1970s. The trend is continuing into 2020, as the angry rhetoric against Jews is spilling over into op-eds in mainstream newspapers.
Anti-Semitism is a recurrent phenomenon in modern history — peaking in some periods and receding in others. Because we appear to be experiencing a peak period now, it is helpful to try to understand the motivation for the reemergence of hateful emotions against the Jews. Rene Girard, French historian and literary theorist of the 20th century, argued that the key to understanding this type of scapegoating is to understand “mimetic desire” or envy. The Orthodox Jews are viewed by some as “having better lives” than they. Those targeted are viewed as having loving families, meaningful lives, and deep faith in God — all of which may be subconsciously envied by others. In his book, Not in God’s Name, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks helps us understand the distorted belief system of anti-Semitic hate groups.
This scapegoating of the Jewish community out of envy should not surprise us — we have seen this before — but we should recognize that this always ends in violence against the Jews. As we are witnessing with the violent anti-Semitic hate groups, envy becomes dangerous when like-minded people begin to band together in groups to share their beliefs that the Jews are the cause of their grief.
New York City is putting all Jews at risk by blaming them for the spread of COVID-19. The scapegoating has already begun, and this will end badly unless the city ends its discriminatory practices against the Jews.
Anne Hendershott is a professor of Sociology and author of The Politics of Envy (Crisis Publications).
