Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Police crack down on open synagogues in Hasidic neighborhoods after funeral

williamsburg-funeral-de-blasio-coronavirus-summonses

Squad cars from the NYPD’s Strategic Response Group on Lee Avenue in Williamsburg. Image by WhatsApp

Police officers issued a series of summonses and tickets to Hasidic Jews and institutions in Williamsburg and Borough Park Thursday, making good on New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s promise that, in the wake of a large funeral which he personally had a hand in breaking up, police would stop issuing warnings for violating state pandemic rules.

The officers handed out more than 75 summonses, according to one Orthodox media outlet, visiting open synagogues to check if the people inside were violating social distancing rules. State rules have allowed houses of worship to remain open, and people can use those spaces if they maintain social distancing, but prayer services are prohibited.

williamsburg-funeral-de-blasio-coronavirus-summonses

Police officers walking through a classroom in Congregation Lev D’Satmar, on Hooper Street in Williamsburg. Image by WhatsApp

The spike in summonses comes two days after a funeral for a respected Hasidic rabbi in Williamsburg which, though planned in direct coordination with community police officers from the local 90th Precinct, drew a crowd of well over 1,000 and was promptly shut down by an influx of officers and de Blasio himself. Afterward, de Blasio singled out the “Jewish community” in a tweet about the incident, testing his long and intimate relationship with Hasidic leaders.

On Thursday morning, residents shared pictures on WhatsApp of police vehicles from the Strategic Response Group — a rapid-deployment unit used for civil unrest and crowd control — lining main thoroughfares in the heavily Hasidic parts of the neighborhood.

One video showed police officers standing in the entrance of a synagogue on Wallabout Street.

A police official told the Forward that, at the Wallabout Street synagogue and at a synagogue on Hooper Street, police found numerous people inside. In both locations, some entry doors were chained closed and there were trash bags taped on the inside of the windows. Police issued 11 summonses total for both locations, six for violations of social distancing and five for fire code violations.

The string of summonses was met with split reactions in the Orthodox world, with some thanking police for enforcing the rules and others decrying what they described as unconstitutional targeting of a minority group.

Ari Feldman is a staff writer at the Forward. Contact him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter @aefeldman

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.