Community Corner

The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has shaken many long-held assumptions about the Jewish community as it confronts a crisis of leadership, finance, and faith. In Queens, the divisions within the Jewish community were laid bare last Monday when Governor Andrew Cuomo declared in a press conference, “We’re going to close the schools in those areas tomorrow, and that’s that.”

In his daily briefing on Tuesday, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that six neighborhoods will be subject to a hyperlocal testing and tracing effort on account of an uptick in positive cases. Coinciding with the week between Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur, these locations are identified with Orthodox Jews: Borough Park, Midwood, Flatbush, Williamsburg, Far Rockaway, and Kew Gardens.

In the week preceding Shabbas Shuvah, the daily chart of coronavirus hospitalizations shared by Governor Andrew Cuomo showed a rise in patients. On Tuesday, September 22, there were 470, and a week later there were 571, with more than one percent of people tested statewide reporting positive results. “Twenty ZIP Codes average a positive test rate of five percent – about five times the statewide average,” he wrote. “We know how this virus spreads and we know how to stop the spread. Local governments MUST enforce compliance.”

The street corner at the heart of Kew Gardens Hills is now an open-air gallery covering a wall from ground to the roof. “I went to the Wynwood Walls in Florida, an open-air mural display, and I said to my wife that I wanted to do this on my walls,” said Michael Feldstein, who owns the dental office on the northeast corner of Main Street and Jewel Avenue.

With most City Council Members facing term limits in 2021, many of them have begun searching for their next jobs before their terms expire. The political news site City & State reported on Thursday that Councilman Rory Lancman is seeking a position in Governor Andrew Cuomo’s administration, citing unnamed sources close to Lancman.

The spotty Internet service at the Kew Gardens Hills post office on Main Street in the past month confirms what many local residents have experienced for years. “I’m not worried about money orders personally, it’s just one of many transactions and services they are unable to provide as a result of this incompetence,” Ephraim Shapiro commented.