Talk show personality Heshy Tishler, who is running for City Council, organized a demonstration
against new COVID-19 restrictions limiting religious gathering in certian hotspots.
Photo by Todd Maisel
Ultra-Orthodox residents
protest new restrictions
COURIER LIFE, OCT. 9-15, 2020 7
BY TODD MAISEL
Crowds of ultra-Orthodox Jewish
residents took to the streets of
Borough Park on Tuesday night to
protest new COVID-19 restrictions
that they believe unfairly target
them.
Borough Park is one of nine
ZIP codes in Brooklyn and Queens
where COVID-19 rates have surged
in recent weeks. Hoping to avoid
another deadly outbreak, Gov. Andrew
Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio
have moved to restrict activity
in the nine hot spots — closing
schools and limiting religious gatherings
to 10 people in the hotspots.
Non-essential businesses in these
districts must close by Friday,
Cuomo announced on Tuesday.
Radio talk show personality
Heshy Tischler, who recently confronted
Health Department inspector
sagainst mask mandates, helped
organize the demonstration, which
quickly spread to other parts of the
neighborhood.
The busy 13th Avenue commercial
strip was closed for nearly two
hours as an unmasked Tischler led
crowds up and down 49th Street
and 50th streets. Tischler vowed to
oppose government efforts to limit
attendance in synagogues.
“You are my soldiers! We are at
war!” he told the crowd.
On Monday, police and government
agencies raided a large synagogue
where up to 500 people were
gathered to celebrate the Jewish
holiday of Sukkot. Borough Park as
the highest rate of COVID-19 positivity
in the city, with more than
8 percent of daily COVID-19 tests
coming back positive.
During the demonstrations, residents
lit a large pile of face masks
on fire on 14th Avenue, blocking
vehicle traffic. Police made no arrests
and reported no injuries in
the fire.
Protesters later attacked a
34-year-old Hasidic man, Berish
Getz, who was filming the crowd
while standing on a perch. The
mob beat him unconscious, his
brother said on Twitter. Emergency
responders took the victim
to an area hospital in critical condition.
He was later listed in stable
condition.
Tischler, who plans to run for
City Council, said that Cuomo
should leave religious gatherings
out of the new COVID-19 rules.
“They are violating our rights
so we will do civil disobedience
just like the BLM Black Lives Matter
— we will fight back,” he said.
Councilman Kalman Yeger,
who stood beside Tischler, issued
a more measured opposition to the
restrictions.
“We have the right to observe
our religion,” he said. “When government
issued an edict that a
5,000-square-foot piece of property
and a 200-square-foot piece of property,
both houses of worship, are
both limited to 10 people, it makes
no sense.”
Several locals pushed back
against Tischler’s COVID-19 skepticism
and his anti-mask rhetoric.
“He doesn’t represent us. We
wear masks and we have had people
in our family die from COVID.
That guy is a clown,” one local
said.
Another man, who also would not
give his name, said he agreed that
religious gatherings should be left
alone “as long as people are wearing
masks – that’s one way to keep people
safe. We need to be able to pray
without anyone bothering us.”
BETTER’
to combat COVID uptick
forced to shutter on Oct. 6 — one day
before de Blasio’s plan had called for.
The governor also overruled the
mayor on using ZIP code-level data
to mandate business closures, and
instead, one day later, issued a bizarre
map fi lled with yellow, orange,
and red overlays that represented a
different level of lockdown slated for
that area. Brooklynites, however,
nearly universally panned Cuomo’s
map for being diffi cult to follow and
providing limited understanding of
areas set for shutdowns.
Bewildered Coney Island Councilman
Mark Treyger took to social media
to criticize the perplexing colorful
graphic, which ostensibly called
for prohibitions on many activities in
large portions of the borough — but
did not have clear enough boundaries
for viewers to understand which level
of new regulations applied to them or
their businesses.
“Who draws lines that don’t follow
the street grid and slices blocks into
pieces? How are communities supposed
to make sense of this?” asked
Treyger. “How does this instill trust
and confi dence during a time when
both are sorely needed?”
De Blasio’s administration eventually
released an online tool for Brooklynites
to look up addresses at www.
NYC.gov/covidzone and fi nd out defi nitively
which of the three color-coordinated
zones they fall in, giving some
glimmer of hope to the residents living
south of Prospect Park — all of whom
were located in one of the three zones
slated for some form of lockdown.
“We’ll get out there and we’ll explain
to people the color coding, we’ll
get out there and explain the map,”
Hizzoner said. “We’re working on the
fi nal details with the state. But the bottom
line is they have a right to decide.
They decided.”
In the “red zone” of Cuomo’s new
targeted approach — which includes
swaths of Borough Park, Gravesend,
Sheepshead Bay, Marine Park, Midwood,
and Flatlands — schools and
non-essential businesses will be
closed, dining will be prohibited both
indoors and outdoors, and religious
services will be limited to 25 percent
capacity.
The surrounding “Orange zone”
will also see total school closures,
bans on restaurants seating patrons
inside, and closures of “high-risk”
businesses.
All other central and southern
Brooklyn areas between Sunset Park
and Canarsie are situated in the “yellow
zone,” where gatherings of all
types are allowed, although with limited
capacity.
The governor did not provide a
timeline for how long his new shutdown
measures would last, or when
each zone’s boundaries would change,
saying only that the state would “attack
each area in the cluster with appropriate
restrictions.”
Yet, the lack of clear-cut answers
on precise shutdown locations — including
many schools jostling on
Wednesday to understand whether
they would be allowed to open for inperson
schooling the following morning
— befuddled local leaders were left
launching scorching indictments of
the “failed leadership” of both the city
and the state’s capital.
“The last few days have been
deeply confusing and the fact there remain
unresolved questions between
the city and state is totally unacceptable.
I’m angry for our communities
and I know we deserve better,” said
southern Brooklyn state Sen. Andrew
Gounardes. “I’m livid that parents
and families’ lives are being thrown
into chaos this way.”
The governor and mayor have presented different plans for targeted lockdowns.
(Left) Photo by Paul Martinka (Right) Associated Press / Mary Altaffer
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