A8 Y THE NEW YORK TIMES, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 10, 2020
Tracking an OutbreakThe Region
PALM TREE, N.Y. — In this
town of 26,000 residents, where
life revolves around family, reli-
gious services and prayer, the per-
centage of coronavirus tests com-
ing back positive is at least 15 per-
cent, among the highest in New
York. There are more than 200 ac-
tive cases, enough to place this Or-
thodox Jewish community north-
west of New York City into a state-
ordered “red zone” with strict new
restrictions on synagogue capaci-
ty and public gatherings.
And yet on Wednesday, as men
and boys streamed out of prayer
services at Congregation Yetev
Lev D’Satmar for the holiday of
Sukkot, the vast majority were not
wearing face masks.
Dina Aker, 67, walked by the
synagogue, also not wearing a
mask. Her husband, 73, had
caught the coronavirus in May, de-
spite, according to Mrs. Aker, be-
ing mainly confined to their home.
That left her feeling that there was
no utility to masks, and that new
lockdown measures would serve
to only prolong the spread of the
disease.
“It’s better that everybody
should have it and the thing is fin-
ished,” Mrs. Aker said. “I pray ev-
ery day, ‘Please, my lovely God,
make it finish.’ ”
The peaceful scenes during
Sukkot, where families gather in
open-air, leaf-covered booths in a
celebration of the fall harvest,
were interrupted only by a loud-
speaker atop a green-and-white
town police car parked in front of a
shopping center on Forest Road; a
recording in both Yiddish and
English warned there was a spike
in coronavirus cases in the area
and stated the importance of
wearing a mask.
A police officer stood near the
car handing out disposable
masks.
The uptick in the ultra-Ortho-
dox enclaves north of the city has
been driven, among many other
factors, by distrust of scientific
messaging and secular authority,
a dedication to communal life,
dense living conditions, and fatal-
ism about the virus brought by a
traumatic spring of death and
sickness, public health officials
and experts say.
The test positivity rates and the
case rates in these communities
are higher than those in the hot
spots of Brooklyn and Queens, al-
though state officials are equally
alarmed about the recent out-
breaks in New York City. (Many
health experts believe that posi-
tivity rates are often an indicator
that more testing is necessary.)
The infections in the region’s ul-
tra-Orthodox communities — spe-
cifically in Rockland and Orange
counties in New York, and in
Lakewood in central New Jersey
— may be related; these areas are
tightly interconnected, and grew
out of an expansion of New York
City’s Orthodox Jewish communi-
ties. Residents often travel from
one place to another for religious
celebrations and gatherings, or to
visit family.
Dr. Patricia Schnabel Ruppert,
the Rockland County health com-
missioner, said it had been diffi-
cult to determine the source of
many of the infections, in part be-
cause residents in these commu-
nities have not fully cooperated
with contact tracers. But the inter-
connectivity among the communi-
ties appears to have played a part.
Gatherings had been taking
place where attendees were not
wearing masks or socially dis-
tancing, she said. Many infections
now, she added, were spreading
within immediate households be-
cause of difficulties isolating and
confusion about the need to so.
“It is very concerning,” she
said. “Our cases have increased
tremendously in the last two
weeks.” About masks and social
distancing, she added, “I still see
evidence that there is more com-
pliance needed, so that needs to
continue to be addressed.”
As of Wednesday, the 1,155 ac-
tive virus cases in just two ZIP
codes — in Spring Valley and
Monsey, which both have large ul-
tra-Orthodox populations — rep-
resented three-quarters of the
cases in Rockland County.
In Orange County, the health
commissioner ordered schools
closed in Palm Tree, where the
positivity rate has soared in re-
cent days to as high as 28 percent.
In Lakewood, which is home to
one of the world’s largest Ortho-
dox yeshivas, the positivity rate
has reached 27 percent, the high-
est in the state.
There has been anger in the
suburban religious communities
north of the city over how Gov. An-
drew M. Cuomo communicated
new restrictions — which include
in the red zones a limit of 10 people
in a house of worship and the clos-ing of all schools for at least two
weeks. But unlike in Brooklyn,
there have not been public pro-
tests.
The state’s regulations will re-
main in effect after a judge denied
a request on Friday by an Ortho-
dox umbrella organization to stop
the strict limit on synagogue at-
tendance.
In a conference call early this
week with community leaders just
before the new restrictions were
announced, the governor did not
reveal his plan to reduce capacity
at synagogues to 10, four Ortho-
dox elected officials wrote in an
open letter. They felt blindsided.
“Cuomo said that this was done
in collaboration with Orthodox
Jewish communities’ leaders,”
Aron B. Wieder, a Rockland
County legislator, said in Yiddish
in a video that was posted on Twit-
ter and had been viewed more
than 61,000 times. “This is an utter
lie.”
Mr. Wieder, who is Hasidic,
urged people to wear masks, not
because the governor said so, but
to protect themselves and their
community. Other leaders said
they also hoped community mem-
bers would follow the rules, even
as they feared that the governor’s
actions made their task more diffi-
cult.
“When the trust is gone,” Mr.
Wieder said in an interview, “it is avery toxic concoction of making
things worse, and I am afraid that
that’s where we are right now.”
Those leaders worried the new
rules would be rejected as imprac-
tical and would not be followed. A
synagogue with a 1,000-seat ca-
pacity in the red zone, for exam-
ple, can barely host a minyan, the
10 men needed for a traditional
prayer service. But a few blocks
away, a tiny synagogue, if it falls
into a zone of lesser restriction,
can potentially seat 25 or more.
“Years of trust and bridge build-
ing was just wiped out by the
stroke of a gubernatorial pen,”
said Rabbi Yisroel Kahan, the ex-
ecutive director of the Oizrim Jew-
ish Council, a Jewish outreach
group in Monsey.
The Cuomo administration said
they had deferred to epidemiolo-
gists, after its call with the com-
munity, to implement those
tighter restrictions.
The suburban areas affected by
the new restrictions included
some of the poorest communities
in the country. The Satmar Ha-
sidic village of Kiryas Joel, in
Palm Tree, is a densely populated
enclave with a poverty rate of
nearly 50 percent, census data
shows. About 60 percent of the
population is under 18, and large
families often live in small homes
and apartments.
About 30 minutes to the south,the red zone in Rockland County
includes the Hasidic village of
New Square, an enclave of
Squarer Hasidim, which has an
estimated poverty rate of more
than 60 percent. The red zone also
includes parts of Monsey, a ham-
let with a diverse mix of Orthodox
Jewish sects and synagogues that
came to national attention last De-
cember when a rabbi was fatally
stabbed at a Hanukkah party
there.
Rockland and Orange County
leaders said their personnel were
receiving training from the state
on how to enforce the regulations,
which would also close all non-
essential businesses for a min-
imum of two weeks.
Just over a year ago, ultra-Or-
thodox communities in Rockland
and Orange counties, as well as in
Brooklyn, experienced a measles
outbreak driven by misinforma-
tion about vaccine safety and low
rates of vaccination. With educa-
tion efforts by health authorities
and school closings by county offi-
cials, vaccination rates rose and
the outbreak ended.
Similarly, the communities
have been susceptible to misinfor-
mation about the coronavirus.
Many residents believed that
their towns had suffered so much
in the spring that they had
reached herd immunity, a claim
rejected by public health officials.“People were saying, I haven’t
changed my lifestyle, day care is
open, school is open, nothing
changed,” Rabbi Kahan said.
“This leads people to not believe it
until they see it.”
Over the last few weeks, as-
sumptions have been upended,
and some behavior has begun to
change, health and town officials
said. Mask-wearing has become
more common, if still not enough.
Some synagogues have posted
signs advising high-risk people
not to enter and set up outdoor
tents for prayer.
But Mr. Cuomo ordered the
much more stringent measures as
the positivity rate continued to
rise.
Community leaders said that
despite the anger about the new
restrictions, they hoped that
enough would change to stem the
frightening increase. Joshua
Hans, the Rockland County co-
ordinator of Hatzoloh, the Jewish
ambulance corps, says that since
late last month, the number of
Covid-related calls has continued
to rise. There are now about 60
calls to the service a day, he said,
double what there normally are,
“and that is directly attributable to
Covid.”
“The last time we’ve seen these
call numbers was mid-April,” he
said. “It is really bringing us
back.”RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIES
Orthodox Suburbs See
Uptick, but Few Masks
By SARAH MASLIN NIR
and SHARON OTTERMANAuthorities distributed disposable masks to children this week in the Satmar Hasidic village of Kiryas Joel, in Palm Tree, N.Y.KEVIN HAGEN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESJesse McKinley contributed re-
porting.
Victoria Gruenert went through
a sudden, ugly breakup this past
spring, so she did what many 20-
somethings have done before her:
She picked up her things and
moved to New York City, eager for
a fresh start. But the city she had
pictured in her head — a high-
paced office life, a jam-packed so-
cial calendar, the bustling Man-
hattan she’d seen on TV — was
gone.
Ms. Gruenert forged ahead, de-
spite reports that scores of
spooked residents had skipped
town. New York had become a
global epicenter of the virus, but
new transplants like her were de-
termined to make the city home.
“Very few people empathized,”
Ms. Gruenert said. “But there will
never be a perfect time to do it, so
we might as well just brace our-
selves, and go right through this,
and see how we come out on the
other end.”
Every year, just over 150,
Americans move to the five bor-
oughs, according to the Depart-
ment of City Planning. While the
city doesn’t track when new resi-
dents arrive, double-parked mov-
ing trucks and wedged-open
building doors are as endemic to
warm New York weather as the
jingle of an ice cream truck or the
illicit thrill of a nutcracker.
This spring, public schools had
closed, offices had started send-
ing employees to work from home,
and restaurants had closed indoor
dining. Newcomers had to adjust
their expectations for a New York
that could be dissatisfying, disap-
pointing or even lonely.
Ms. Gruenert, 25, found an
apartment on her drive down
from Maine, and didn’t leave it for
14 days. Her social life was limited
to walks along Brooklyn’s Eastern
Parkway, Atlantic Avenue and
Empire Boulevard — thorough-
fares of the Crown Heights neigh-
borhood that are usually packed
with pedestrians, all turned quiet.
Many people took the rumors of
an exodus from the city as an invi-
tation: If New York was really
“over,” rent must be pretty cheap.
“It’s a perfect moment for
young people to come to the city,”
said Stephanie Diamond, who
runs The Listings Project, a list-
serv of open apartments and work
spaces. “It’s definitely easier, be-
cause of decreased rent and in-
creased vacancies, and there are
apartments that are furnished, so
you don’t have to move with mov-
ing trucks and all of your belong-
ings.”
When Jessica Masanotti moved
to the Upper West Side of Manhat-
tan from Charlotte, N.C., in May,
she and her husband transported
everything themselves, still ner-
vous to hire movers. “We could
pull our U-Haul straight up to our
apartment building, which was
probably unheard-of before
Covid,” Ms. Masanotti said.
She and her husband had lived
in Charlotte for 14 years. She said
she felt that New Yorkers took the
pandemic more seriously than
other Americans. “We actually
felt safer being in the city than we
did in the South,” she said. “We
were still surrounded by people
who thought it was a hoax or not abig deal.”
Jon Gunnell, a nurse from Ar-
kansas, moved to New York
purely to help at the height of the
crisis — and ended up never leav-
ing. One day, he was listening to
“The Dan Le Batard Show,” his fa-
vorite podcast, and found himself
so moved by the interview with
Dr. Celine Gounder, an epidemiol-
ogist at N.Y.U. Langone Health,
that he decided, right there, that
he’d move up and do whatever he
could to help.
With the assistance of an
agency, Mr. Gunnell, 53, moved to
Brooklyn in early March, and
started working at a wound care
clinic in the Bronx. He wasn’t wor-
ried about contracting the virus
himself. “I just rationalized a lot to
convince myself that I’m invinci-
ble,” he said. “The reason I came
to New York was to disappear and
become anonymous and you can
do that real easy up here.”
He said he had recently gotten
divorced. “I think I’m doing it for
selfish reasons more than any-thing else,” he said. “Each time I
faced my fears, my depression
went away.”
It was a rough transition. His
agency housing wasn’t what he
was promised, and he spent more
than one night sleeping in his car.
He never felt like he quite be-
longed in New York, even in a
shrunken version of itself, devoid
of so many of its lively hallmarks.
But then again, he never quite felt
like he belonged in Arkansas, ei-
ther. So he stayed put.
For others, the spread of the vi-
rus and the sound of sirens exac-
erbated the feelings of dread.
Tiana Miller-Leonard arrived in
the city at the beginning of March,
relocating to her company’s New
York office. There were a few co-
ronavirus cases in the Bay Area,
where she previously lived, but,
according to her, no one was tak-
ing them seriously.
She lasted in her office for a
week and a half before the com-
pany started sending people
home. There, Ms. Miller-Leonardsaid, she listened to ambulance si-
rens wail all day, every day. “I
wasn’t sure if it was an New York
thing or a pandemic thing,” she
said.
After staying with her grand-
mother for a few weeks, Ms.
Miller-Leonard attempted to
move into an apartment of her
own in April. Most of her belong-
ings were still in California, and
furniture and houseware stores
were still closed, so she paid about
$3,000 to have her belongings
transported to New York, an ex-
pense she didn’t foresee.
The roommates Ms. Miller-
Leonard left behind couldn’t find
anyone to fill her room back in Cal-
ifornia. She had to continue pay-
ing rent there, too, until they
found someone.
Ms. Miller-Leonard was happy
with her decision, though she be-
moaned the New York she
could’ve had. “I had so many
dreams for what I’d do here:
friends I’d be making, different
shows I’d see,” she said. “That’sthe thing I’ve been saddest about:
it’s hard to make friends during a
pandemic.” But during the sum-
mer, she said, she joined protests
against police brutality, making
her feel like she was “part of the
city.”
Some newcomers did not travel
far, but at the beginning of the pan-
demic, New York felt like another
world.
Omari Evans, a public relations
executive, had long planned to
move to Manhattan, about 20
miles from his hometown, Tea-
neck, New Jersey, in order to cut
down on his commute to work
downtown. Despite stay-at-home
orders, he moved to Harlem in
early April.
“Part of me wanted to naïvely
not accept that everything was
going to be shut down by the time
I headed over,” he said. “I wanted
to leave New Jersey. However
Covid was going to impact the city,
I was still going to find a way to
enjoy it.”
But alone in his new apartment,
he found himself looking forward
to the 7 p.m. cheers for essential
workers. “It got really bleak and
insular and isolated,” Mr. Evans
said. “It was the highlight of my
day for a couple months, just be-
cause there wasn’t anything else
going on.”
Emma Boden’s friends started
to drop off, one by one, deciding
that a move they were supposed
to make with her to a locked down
New York wasn’t worth it. But she
had long dreamed of moving to
the city, having grown up in Wac-
cabuc, N.Y. She had planned for
months to move after she and her
friends graduated from Amherst
College.
Ms. Boden, 22, moved to the Up-
per West Side this summer. She
said she found a vibrant New York
that others could not see.
“A lot of people saying that New
York was wiped out were very
wealthy older people who, if they
can’t go to the super expensive
restaurant and sit inside, then it’s
not worth it for them, but that’s
not what it’s about for me,” Ms.
Boden said.
“I just didn’t believe that New
York was dead.”MAKING THE MOVE
Feeling Drawn to New York in Spite of It All, Newcomers Say Hello to All That
Victoria Gruenert, left, moved to New York in the spring. Right, Jessica Masanotti said her family felt safer than in Charlotte, N.C.PHOTOGRAPHS BYASHLEY PENA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESBy JAZMINE HUGHES