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Presented by Opportunities for NY
Starting today,
indoor dining will again be closed across New York City. Less than two and a half months after restaurants were allowed to open their dining rooms at reduced capacity, surging hospitalizations for Covid-19 prompted Gov. Andrew Cuomo to order the new shutdown.
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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.