Shortly before Yom Kippur, former Governor and current Mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo released a video statement to the frum media in which he purported to apologize for his discriminatory treatment of our shul’s and baatei midrashim during and after Sukkos 2020. For those who may have forgotten, Cuomo announced on chol hamoed Sukkos 2020 that Shuls and other houses of worship in Orthodox neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens would be limited to 10 or 25 person attendance.
While Cuomo’s “apology” was obviously driven by his desperate desire to remain relevant in a mayoral election that he trails badly, there were at least some who were ready to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Cuomo’s repentance didn’t last long. On Friday he gave another interview, this time to the non-Jewish media, in which he took back the apology and said that he didn’t do anything wrong in 2020 and would do it all over again.
Cuomo told the reporter that his “apology” was “I’m sorry you felt that way,” explaining that “they believed that they were closed down because they were Orthodox. That was not the case . .. they thought that there was some connection that they happened to be Othodox Jewish communities. That was totally not true.”
The interview concluded with this: Cuomo was asked, “So you wouldn’t have changed anything?” He responded, “no.”
Some apology. What he is sorry about is that paranoid Orthodox Jews got it all wrong.
Cuomo has gone from disrespecting and insulting our religion to disrespecting and insulting our intelligence.
YWN believes it is important to correct the record and remind those who have forgotten what Andrew Cuomo broadcast to the world about the Orthodox community in October 2020. As the United States Supreme Court found when it struck down Cuomo’s rules because they discriminated against our religion, Cuomo’s “statements made in connection with the challenged rules can be viewed as targeting the ‘ultra-Orthodox [Jewish] community.’”
What were those statements?
He began by singling out the “ultra-Orthodox community” and “religious institutions” as causing the recent COVID-19 “problem” and threatened to “close the religious institutions down if you do not agree to enforce the rules.”
Shortly thereafter, he said that “we have a couple of unique clusters, frankly, which are more religious organizations, and that’s what we’re targeting,” and he stressed that the targeted cluster “is predominately an ultra-Orthodox cluster.” Cuomo then announced on national television that the spread was “because of their religious practices.”
To leave no doubt about what he was doing, Cuomo emphasized that “the micro-cluster we’re focusing on is the ultra-Orthodox communities” and that it is necessary to impose stringent restrictions on “these ultra Orthodox communities, who are also very politically powerful.” During one of his nationally televised press conferences, he held up a picture of a frum funeral to demonstrate how unsafe the Orthodox community was. The only problem was that it was a twenty year old picture.
To repeat: during the pandemic, Andrew Cuomo publicly blamed Orthodox Jewish communities and practices for the spread of COVID. And to top it all off, while he was targeting us for discriminatory treatment he publicly repeated the old trope about our political power.
And he now proudly says he wouldn’t change a thing.
We should take him at his word that he would do it all over again if he believed that it was politically advantageous for him.
We are well aware of the stakes in the upcoming mayoral election, as well as of the many good reasons for the deep antipathy to Zohran Mamdani.
YWN does not endorse candidates for political office and would not presume to tell anyone whether they should vote for Curtis Sliwa, Andrew Cuomo or anyone else.
But our community’s political effectiveness is not enhanced when we play dumb or allow ourselves to be made fools of the way Cuomo did in the space of 48 hours last week.
Vote for whomever you feel you must. But do it with your eyes wide open and your nose tightly shut.
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17 Responses
Time to get out of NYC. Its bad and getting worse. I just moved out, so glad I did.
I’m not trying to be an anti-Semite but maybe the infection rates were higher in religious communities where men daven together in close proximity.
If this editorial and update pushes one vote to Mandami then YWN is very guilty of aiding and abetting an overt anti semite. You cannot compare the two.
I’m very happy he clari clarified because I felt bad about his thought that he needed to apologize. I agree totally with him and that he definitely doesn’t need to give any apologies. I supported his restrictions 1000%!!
smart is knowing that a tomato is a fruit, stupid is to put it in the fruit salad. holding a grudge against cuomo won’t change what he did during covid, but it will help get mamdani elected. not so smart, is it?
So, if I understand the YWN editorial correctly, since Curtis Sliwa cannot realistically win, we really all should be voting for Mamdamni. Oh Gosh!
So if you’re not telling us who to vote for then what are you saying?? And if you are saying that we shouldn’t vote for him then that makes even less sense because there’s no world where Mamdani is better than him. If you think anyone “accepted” his apology then you’re the one who is insulting our intelligence. Everyone knows that it’s a politically motivated statement that means nothing.
And maybe, just maybe, take a deep honest inwards look and admit that the frum community’s conduct during COVID was deplorable and did in fact lead to many unnecessary deaths.
Cuomo is equivalent to Haman. He is evil. Remember, he closed down our Yeshivas, our Shuls, he put sick with the elderly in nursing homes. We couldn’t have decent Levayas, we had to follow arrows in stores that did nothing. He closed stores that were essential but had liquor stores open. He said his daily briefing were essential . Park’s , outdoors were chained shut. Parents and grandparents died ALONE… Please vote Curtis Sliwa. Give him a chance. It’s Kavod HaTorah to at least try to pick the better option. DON’T be a fool and vote for someone who’s already proven wicked . Just to name a few more things he’s done wrong. He took away car pool on the GWB, he started congestion pricing, cashless bail, etc… A G’Mar Tov and Daven for Mashiach now. VOTE REPUBLICAN we must do our part to keep all Hamans out of office.
I will never vote for Mamdami, and I will never vote for Cuomo after what he did. So we’re all screwed.
The people commenting here on how Coumo was right are thick-headed. Coumo singled out Jewish neighborhoods for different treatment DESPITE the rates of infection in frum neighborhoods being the same, or lower, compared to surrounding neighborhoods and other boroughs.
He is a Jew-hater, period. But not as a dangerous Jew-hater as Mamdani, so I guess he is the lesser of two evils.
Cuomo says he’ll harass us, and continue the discrimination we’ve always had to put up with. Mamdani promises to use Oct. 7 as a model, and bring the intifada to places such as Boro Park – though at least we won’t have to worry about discrimination since we’ll be dead or have been forced to flee. There are only two realistic candidates, so the choice is between subtle anti-Semitism as opposed to pogroms and genocide. A strong Cuomo victory will probably convince the Democrats, nationally, that running on a “progressive” platform that includes support for violent anti-Semitism is not the way to win elections (and if Mamdani wins comfortably, the message will be that the “Democratic Socialists” will do well to be following in the footsteps of the 20th century’s “National Socialists”).
The fact is they claimed the frum areas were red zone and it was supposed to be based on numbers which it wasn’t. Red zones were made up based on if they saw shuls and weddings and funerals taking place. For all those claiming it was much worse in the frum community – your talking early on where there before there was any lockdown ideas. Good chance there would have been herd immunity for the frum community if not for Out of towners coming into the tristate for weddings etc.!
Well again this is a nice Zohran endorsement but you have to pick the lesser of two evils. You could pick the Covid Czar or the jihadist anti Semite. I’ll have to settle for the covid czar at least he won’t support you getting stabbed in the street
Cuomo brought us LEGALIZED mishgav zachor “marriage” in New York Sedom (State). He paid for out of State women to come and murder their babies here with his abortion on demand, even into the 3rd trimester. He gave Alvin Bragg the green light to keep violent criminals on our streets with his bail reform. The man is an evil rotten toaivanik piece of horse manure. I never did and never will vote for that creature, regardless of some worthless endorsement by any self proclaimed askanim. I will write in a name instead.
We choose Curtis Sliwa for NYC Mayor. The only reliable candidate who can be counted on consistently in action over decades, not just words during election season.
We vote with faith, not fear. Our vote is not wasted, it is our right and our choice. We will not vote for anyone else, no matter what. God has already determined the outcome.
I strongly urge all those who suffer from panic over this election to please seek help.
“Vote for whomever you feel you must. But do it with your eyes wide open and your nose tightly shut.”
This obviously implies voting for one of the two Democrats. YWN should not have written this.
Rav Miller and others would clearly hold that it would be forbidden to vote for Antiochus. Not to mention common sense.
Vote for whichever candidate – out of all the candidates, not just the Democrats – that you feel is best. G-d will anyways handle it as He sees fit.