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New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio Rebukes Jewish Funeral Gathering, Silent On Huge Crowds For Flyover Show

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Marlo Safi Culture Reporter
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New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio censured the local Jewish community Tuesday night for attending a funeral gathering during the coronavirus stay-at-home orders.

“Something absolutely unacceptable happened in Williamsburg tonite: a large gathering in the middle of this pandemic,” the mayor tweeted at around 9:30 p.m.

The funeral was for a rabbi who had died of coronavirus and was held in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, the New York Times reported.

The authorities have dispersed several religious gatherings since restrictions were put in place banning large meetings to slow the spread of the virus. In New York, weddings and funerals in neighborhoods with large Jewish populations were broken up.

“My message to the Jewish community, and all communities, is this simple: the time for warnings has passed,” said de Blasio. “I have instructed the NYPD to proceed immediately to summons or even arrest those who gather in large groups.”

The episode Tuesday appeared to have been the first time de Blasio had directly participated in a dispersal, according to Yeshiva World, which was involved in the rabbi’s funeral, the New York Times reported.

The website also calls out the mayor’s alleged double standard.

“But where was the NYPD and Mayor de Blasio when tens of thousands of New Yorkers were packed into parks and other locations to watch the Thunderbirds and Blue Angels today?” (RELATED: Report: FBI Says Racist Extremists Are Encouraging Each Other To Spread Coronavirus To Jews And Cops)

Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz also questioned whether the mayor would’ve worded his statement differently had it been a different group or religious minority instead of the Jewish community.

People gathered on city streets and in New York parks to watch the Blue Angels flyover, many in close proximity to each other and not wearing masks.

Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), also responded on Twitter, expressing the danger of “generalizing” the Jewish community.

A Democratic city council member who represents a section of Brooklyn with a large Orthodox Jewish population expressed his disbelief of the mayor’s statement on Twitter, writing “This has to be a joke.”