May 28, 2021 11:07 am Rivka Nissel, right, works with a client during a mental health counseling session at the Jewish Board s Seymour Askin Clinic in the Midwood section of Brooklyn, N.Y. (Kate Lord)
Advertisement
When New York was caught in the midst of a brutal wave of COVID-19 last spring, the daily death toll reaching as high as 800, the stress for many Orthodox Jewish schoolchildren was overwhelming.
They were catching the coronavirus in high numbers. And their parents or grandparents were frequently falling ill many subsequently died or developed long-haul symptoms.
Now, a year on, that trauma hasn’t subsided.
“That was very hard for children to live with,” said psychologist Norman Blumenthal, director of the trauma, bereavement and crisis response team at Ohel Children’s Home and Family Services.
SHARE:
For the past several years, City & State has closed out the year with a list of leaders in the private sector who are actively seeking to help New Yorkers and make our state a better place. It was a nice, uplifting feature that reminded us all that there’s more to life than making money as we brainstorm our own New Year’s resolutions.
But 2020 was different. As we shut ourselves in our homes and lost family, friends and neighbors to a deadly pandemic, and as the federal government abdicated responsibility, it fell on state and local governments and private institutions to do the responsible thing and pick up the slack to help New Yorkers in their time of need.