52 THENEWYORKER,MARCH30, 2020
was a lot of contact. Very much part
of our day-to-day life—especially with
the men going to shul three times a
day, and Torah classes every single
day. One of the things that’s so amaz-
ing is that everybody kicked into high
gear to put up yeshivas online within
two days.
“In Crown Heights, davening still
goes on, it always has to be there, within
the realm of whatever number the
health department says. No more than
ten people in Israel. A rabbi told me,
‘Faith is not the absence of reason.’
We don’t give up on the interventions.
God blessed us with doctors, not as
something apart from us but as some-
thing there to help us. My father told
me this: God is in charge, and God
watches over us. Every time I get re-
ally panicky, there’s that sense that
God is taking care of us. I’m an anx-
ious person and it’s not easy. But I have
to access that. Rabbi Nachum said,
‘Gam zu l ’tovah’—‘This, too, shall
be for the good.’”On Tuesday, rabbis
closed the Crown Heights synagogues.
“Now,” Soffer said, “many people are
praying outdoors, six feet away from
each other.”T
he self-exile of the very wealthy
from the city that made them rich
is hardly uniform. A feeling of social
responsibility, of solidarity, is embodied
by Elizabeth Smith, who is the head of
the Central Park Conservancy. She and
her husband, Rick Cotton, the head of
the Port Authority of New York and
New Jersey, became among the first pub-
lic officials in New York known to have
Covid-19. Now all she wants is to get
back to the Park.
“I’ve never been in the tabloids be-
fore,” Smith, who is in her late sixties,
said from her Manhattan apartment,
where she was convalescing, and in her
second week of seclusion. “In my fam-
ily, you’re in the paper when you’re born
and again when you marry. And the fact
of the matter is that the virus gets ...
very virulent. I wasn’t feeling well on
Saturday—all the typical flu symptoms,
like a fever, but a relatively mild case ofthe flu for me. I stayed in bed, had my
moments of panic, but I was fortunate
to be paired with Rick, who was posi-
tive but asymptomatic. And I was well
enough to stay in touch with the Con-
servancy and find out how everyone was
faring—the morale and the health of
the staff—and the Park itself, too. It has
the tremendous power of offering peace
and respite to people. The amazing peo-
ple are the city workers. They keep show-
ing up. They show up at work and they
do the right thing. There are lots of
selfless people, lots of people who take
public service seriously.”
Even if she hadn’t fallen ill, Smith
said, she would have wanted to stay in
the city. “We have a big responsibility
to the public,” she said. “You know, when
Frederick Law Olmsted made the Park,
it was just with that in mind: most peo-
ple don’t even have a chance of leaving
New York. It’s for all those people who
couldn’t leave the city, to get to the Ad-
irondacks.” Smith is the chair of the Li-
brary of America, which published a
collection of Olmsted’s essays, letters,Thursday, March 19th: Gail Sirignano being tested for COVID-19 in a parking lot in Jericho, New York.