Rabbi Zalman Teitelbaum Tests Positive for COVID-19
December 28, 2020
Teitelbaum, who is in his late 60s, is apparently showing mild symptoms, according to the site.
Teitelbaum, who is based in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, is not the first Hasidic leader to test positive for the virus. His own brother and leader of a rival faction of the Satmar Hasidic community, Rabbi Aaron Teitelbaum, tested positive for COVID-19 back in March.
The Satmar community has been implicated in a number of large gatherings over the last several months, in defiance of state and city guidelines meant to minimize the spread of COVID-19. In November, a large wedding for one of Zalman’s grandchildren was downsized after plans for it drew public scrutiny.
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City Hall and the NYPD knew in advance that an Orthodox synagogue would hold a massive funeral in Williamsburg Monday, and begged leaders to comply with COVID-19 restrictions to no avail, The Post has learned.
In pleas before the event, Mayor de Blasio’s representatives, including Pinny Ringel, the mayor’s liaison to the Orthodox Jewish community, asked the Yetev Lev D’Satmar temple at 152 Rodney St. to hold the funeral more safely outside, or at least require that everyone wear masks. The Satmar sect leaders refused, agreeing only to announce that masks were available at the door, sources revealed.
It all comes down to “promote the general welfare” vs. “the free exercise…of religion.”
Nov. 8. Satmar Grand Rabbi Aaron Teitelbaum more than freely exercised his religious traditions by hosting a family wedding in Brooklyn reportedly attended by 7,000 guests at a time when coronavirus cases persisted at high levels of infection.
Nov. 23. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio promoted the general welfare by socking the organizers with a laughable $15,000 fine.
Nov. 26. Our dysfunctional Supreme Court stamped a final judgment on a synagogue attendance case – rooted in Brooklyn – prioritizing “the free exercise…of religion” over “the general welfare.”
“Promote the general welfare” is among the principles spelled out in the Constitution’s Preamble, the priorities which compelled the very creation of our Constitution that was proposed at the 1787 Constitutional convention, and subsequently ratified by two-thirds of the states the following year.
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Emergency responders work at a kosher supermarket, the site of a shooting in Jersey City, New Jersey, December 11, 2019. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
NEW YORK (JTA) When 25,000 Jews marched across the Brooklyn Bridge on January 5, 2020, Evan Bernstein felt something he hadn’t experienced in weeks: optimism.
Not even a month earlier, he had prayed with the small Orthodox community in Jersey City, New Jersey, next to the spot where shooters had just killed three people at a kosher supermarket after gunning down a police officer.
Eighteen days later, when a man with a machete entered a rabbi’s home in Monsey, New York, and stabbed five people, Bernstein then the New York-New Jersey regional director of the Anti-Defamation League drove up immediately. After staying up half the night checking in on the community and talking to law enforcement and reporters, he slept in his car. Before and after the attacks, he’d been making trips to Brooklyn to respond to a strin