This morning I am sitting at work in numb silence. What happened in my neighborhood last night was painful and unacceptable, and 100% preventable.

A thread.

The choice to see the Governor's words as an attack on religious freedom led many to argue that the treatment of our neighborhoods and zip codes was based on "picking on" the Jews, "anti-semitism," "reminiscient of the Holocaust."

The alt choice would have been to unite the community with safe public health behaviors.

Two rules: wear masks, avoid crowds. That’s all.

It is no secret that from May-Sept my community failed to follow these rules.

Many felt the disease had run its course in our streets.

But signs of an uptick in September still did not induce a change in behaviors, until threats to shut us down led to widespread mask wearing in the public arena.

Let me rephrase this: the neighborhood masked up by Yom Kippur due to threats of school, shul, and business shutdowns: NOT in response to rising cases and threats to their loved ones health.

And the meager leadership we have encouraged this logic.

Now with our cases rising and the Gov taking a strong stance, our leadership fomented theories on persecution, antisemitism, freedom of religion, and more.

The culmination of all of these inappropriate responses? Shameful protests, injuries, rampant chillul Hashem.

We live in a country and state whose health department officials provided us guidance on having safe Yomim Tovim, from how to conduct Yom Kippur davening to how to Sukkah hop safely. How lucky are we? How grateful should we be, to be given bespoke pandemic guidance?

Our leadership - political, religious, askanim - had ONE chance to back up the rules: to endorse their community members to take the rules seriously, make a Kiddush Hashem, keep their loved ones safe.

They failed, and instead, stoked a fire that shames us all.

I am crying today, as we all should be. We are in the news, acting shameful, yet feeling righteous about it.

And we cannot even do teshuva for it for another whole year.