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 5
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 eventually promised
to release an online tool for Brooklynites
to look up addresses 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
in-person 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