Read on Twitter
I recently met a man who is anguished about his community + COVID. His neighbors are generous and warm, but refuse to wear masks. Leaders have largely been defiant.
This story could take place anywhere in the U.S. But Reuven is a Hasidic Jew in BK.(1/x) https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/04/pandemic-covid-hasidic-jews-yiddish/618539/
This story could take place anywhere in the U.S. But Reuven is a Hasidic Jew in BK.(1/x) https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/04/pandemic-covid-hasidic-jews-yiddish/618539/
Most pop-culture stories about the Orthodox world are told from the perspective of people who have left. Reuven’s is a voice not often heard: Someone who deeply loves his community, but who feels betrayed by how they’ve acted in this crisis. (2/x) https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/04/pandemic-covid-hasidic-jews-yiddish/618539/
Reuven—that's a pseudonym— risked a lot to speak with me. When we met in Prospect Park, he kept directing us away from the road. He went silent when we passed an Orthodox couple, strangers whose mere presence made him anxious. (3/x) https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/04/pandemic-covid-hasidic-jews-yiddish/618539/
His Yiddish magazine, Der Veker, recently published an expose on the actions that may have exacerbated a brutal year of dying in that community. If his community found out he runs it, he could lose his job, his wife, and his kids. (4/x) https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/04/pandemic-covid-hasidic-jews-yiddish/618539/
I know most people are intensely focused on what will happen post-pandemic, post-vaccination. But this year has revealed something powerful about how communities treat their most vulnerable. When all of this is over, we still have to live together. (5/x) https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/04/pandemic-covid-hasidic-jews-yiddish/618539/
Read my story on Reuven and Der Veker, an underground, Yiddish magazine that is forcing a reckoning in the Hasidic world over COVID: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/04/pandemic-covid-hasidic-jews-yiddish/618539/
