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Mar. 7, 2021
On the morning of March 3, 2020, Tamar Weinberg had just waved goodbye to her children on their school bus in New Rochelle, New York, when she received a text message informing her that school was closed and the students would be sent home.
“I said to myself, ‘Are you kidding me?’” she told Haaretz this week, a year since her small suburb suddenly became headline news.
Shortly after, Weinberg found out someone in her community had tested positive for the coronavirus. “And then we were stuck at home,” she said.
Located about a 40-minute drive north of New York City, New Rochelle is home to a large Jewish community. Last March, it became the first American epicenter of the coronavirus after a Jewish attorney who lives in the town, Lawrence Garbuz, became the second person in New York state to be diagnosed with COVID-19.