De Blasio singles out the Jewish community for flouting COVID-19 rules - Business Insider - Business Insider
De Blasio singles out the Jewish community for flouting COVID-19 rules - Business Insider - Business Insider |
| Posted: 28 Apr 2020 10:49 PM PDT New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is catching heat for singling out the Jewish community in a tweet about people who are not following the city's social distancing rules. "My message to the Jewish community, and all communities, is this simple: the time for warnings has passed," he wrote on Tuesday evening. "I have instructed the NYPD to proceed immediately to summons or even arrest those who gather in large groups. This is about stopping this disease and saving lives. Period." The tweet was one of three sent Tuesday night, but they were not threaded together. Earlier, de Blasio vented his frustrations about a large funeral gathering in Williamsburg that occurred on Tuesday night — that he personally went to help break up. "Something absolutely unacceptable happened in Williamsburg tonite: a large funeral gathering in the middle of this pandemic," he tweeted. "When I heard, I went there myself to ensure the crowd was dispersed. And what I saw WILL NOT be tolerated so long as we are fighting the Coronavirus." Williamsburg, a neighborhood in Brooklyn, has a large population of ultra-Orthodox Jews, also known as Hasidic Jews, numbering about 57,000. The insular Jewish community has seen large numbers of coronavirus cases and some members have openly flouted social distancing rules by holding large prayer services or funerals. Still, de Blasio's tweet was criticized for singling out "the Jewish community," despite the fact that that New York state is home to an estimated 1.7 million Jews who have largely followed the social distancing rules in place. "Hey @NYCMayor, there are 1mil+ Jewish people in #NYC," Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, wrote on Twitter in response to de Blasio's tweet. "The few who don't social distance should be called out — but generalizing against the whole population is outrageous especially when so many are scapegoating Jews." "This has to be a joke," New York City Council member Chaim Deutsch wrote on Twitter. "Did the Mayor of NYC really just single out one specific ethnic community (a community that has been the target of increasing hate crimes in HIS city) as being noncompliant?" A spokesperson for de Blasio said in a statement that the mayor "has been one of the staunchest supporters of the Jewish community." "There were thousands of people gathered today, putting their lives and the lives of others at risk," his press office said. "It is his responsibility to all New Yorkers to speak up. There is no double standard." The coronavirus pandemic is fueling anti-Semitism around the world, particularly in New York, where Jews comprise approximately 13% of the city's population. The Kantor Center at Tel Aviv University said in a report released earlier this month that in the first few months of 2020, there has been a rise in anti-Semitic expressions and "Jew-hatred," mainly from activists on the extreme right. One of New York's first coronavirus cases occurred in New Rochelle, a city of around 80,000 in Westchester County, which has a large Jewish population. The community has recently been the target of "zoom-bombing," where religious services streamed on Zoom were interrupted by anti-Semitic acts. |
| Coronavirus Infected Us With Romance, Dating Experts Say - Jewish Journal Posted: 28 Apr 2020 05:41 PM PDT Dating can be perilous at the best of times, but with COVID-19 shutdowns, finding romance has become even more difficult. "I had been on three dates and it was going great, and then we got hit by this and it's been reduced to texting," Ariane Smith from Ann Arbor Michigan told the Journal. "While I am on the apps trying to talk to people, it feels really dry because we know there's no possibility of meeting up," Elisa Dickie, who is self-isolating in Buffalo, N.Y., said. "Skype dates are nice and all, but I don't see any real connections coming from them because there's no real connection or intimacy." However, Los-Angeles based Jewish cyber-dating expert Julie Spira believes the pandemic might actually be the perfect cure for dating woes. "This is actually a good thing," Spira told the Journal. "We are looking at a slower process for dating, which prevents people from just ending up with a hookup and getting ghosted." As a dating coach, Spira said she finds that being intimate too quickly and being abandoned are the most common complaints among her clients. This outlook inspired her to launch "Dating in the Age of COVID-19," a resource for singles who have given up on dating but not romance. She is even offering dress rehearsals for virtual dates.
"The need right now to be connected is so heightened, whether that is with your friends or in romantic relationships," Spira said. "People want to be in relationships, but they just can't meet in person." Adam Rubin, who is social distancing in Los Angeles, is not throwing in the courtship towel just yet. "I was going to meet up with a girl from JSwipe, but now we've just been chatting," he said. "It's postponed our meet-up but we haven't canceled it." For singles skeptical of uploading their dating life, Spira said, "They need to realize everyone is in a long-distance relationship now, regardless of where that other person's ZIP code is."
Nevertheless, she added she believes the coronavirus might unlock a romantic renaissance. "I've never seen dating become as creative as it is now," Spira said. "I'm watching people take on some really romantic gestures: sending food deliveries so you can dine together on Zoom, talking about going on a vacation someday and each picking out a city as they explore virtual tours of museums in the locations, shared playlists on Spotify." Even dating services are getting more creative. "I was expecting lockdowns in the United States well before they were announced, so we launched a virtual dating initiative pretty early on. Now we're shifting our resources to building video chat features," Ben Rabizadeh, the CEO of JWed, a dating service for Jewish singles, told the Journal. "We are building right now something to be able to schedule a date, to make it more formal so people can build anticipation for dates." He also envisions developing gaming and virtual gifting features.
For Steph Black, who works for the National Council of Jewish Women in Washington, D.C., the pandemic has seen her fast track her romantic relationship, with her girlfriend moving in. "Relationships are moving faster due to the crisis," since singles now have fewer distractions from each other, Spira noted. To those who are sheltering-in and shacking up, Logan Levkoff, a sexuality and relationship guru, told the Journal, "It is hard to blend lives into one space, no matter how big or small that space is … If you're doing it, you need to leave room for people to mess up and make mistakes." All-in-all, making mindful decisions in a pandemic could mean facing less personal judgment, Levkoff said. "Consenting adults get to make any decisions they want about when they want to have sex, how they want to have sex, whether it's on the first date or 10th date or whatever. That being said, the inability to connect physically takes the pressure off the question of 'When am I supposed to?' and 'Will I be judged for it?'
As COVID-19 cripples our world with restrictions, the virus appears to be doing the opposite for lovers, according to Spira. "Virtual dating was something in the past that people really didn't embrace, because they felt, 'Oh, my lighting is not good' or 'I'm going to have a bad hair day' or 'I will look better in person.' Well, right now, everyone is having a bad hair day," she said, adding the pandemic has lifted deal breakers such as looks, age and physical distance. Levkoff concurred. "This is an opportunity for us to date outside of our type, to push ourselves to connect with types of people that we wouldn't have done earlier," he said. "When we're operating in big social circles, we often think we are supposed to want what the person next to us wants. Now, we get to be authentic." Ariel Sobel is the Journal's social media editor. |
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