Montreal Jews Will Suffer for Covid-19 Arrogance

Emergency Testing Site in Cote Saint-Luc

I don't think that in my 1400 blog posts, I've ever had to write such a wrenching and personally distressing piece as what I'm about to pen here.

Although I'm not particularly religious, I do consider myself a Zionist and a member of the tribe in good standing.
I am the farthest thing from a self-loathing Jew, yet I cannot in good conscience stay silent in the face of the egregious and dangerously arrogant attitude of too many members of Montreal's Jewish community in regards to the current pandemic.

Because the non-Jewish community, especially the media  is reluctant to criticize us for fear of being branded antisemitic, that all too-often employed defence mechanism, the justifiable criticism over our community's behaviour had been muted.
And so it befalls me to say what isn't being said, that is that as a community we have acted shamefully, flippantly and selfishly thus endangering lives.

It is a sad fact that almost a third to forty percent of the coronavirus cases in Montreal are occurring in my Jewish community, largely because of the arrogance displayed by inconsiderate and selfish members who flouted the containment rules, both the spirit and the letter.

Now it is not a condemnation of the entire Jewish community, because it only takes a few idiots to cause havoc and mayhem and sadly in this respect, this tiny minority of scofflaws appear to be higher in our community, leading to the inevitable situation whereby we are seeing a disproportionate number of infected.
The idiots in our community who ignored and perhaps continue to ignore the containment rules actually transcends the Jewish subgroups and those who might be inclined to point the finger at one particular group, be it Sephardi, Ashkenazy, religious or ultra-religious are wrong.
We are all among the sinners.

Let us review some of the transgressions;

After sending out a message to close schools and limit gatherings the police were actually forced to dispatch cars to patrol ultra-religious schools in Outremont in order to force them to submit to distancing or closure rules.

Ha! Probably the closest these boys have ever been to a woman.

Here from a CBC story;

"Twenty young people stand on the doorstep of a synagogue in Outremont, in Montreal, a worrisome look.

Several police cars are circulating in the neighbourhood and one of them stopped here on Hutchison Street, at the corner of Saint-Viateur Street.

Two police officers try to chat with the young people in an effort to warn them to be careful during these pandemic times, the policewoman explains to us, returning to her car.

Community police will follow up, she added. Montreal police also had to intervene in a large Orthodox Jewish wedding in west Montreal earlier this week."

Côte-Saint-Luc adopted measures the day after this event to limit gatherings on its territory to 10 people or less, in particular because of the large number of places of worship found there.

For many very religious communities, social distancing may be more difficult to implement than for non-believers. 

If we stop praying, will God help us stop the virus? asked a Hasidic lady crossed in front of another synagogue in Outremont, which was still open on Monday, insisting that only prayer can save us. 

CBC {Fr}

While we'd expect the ultra-religious Jews to flout the rules, it is, in fact, their modus operandi, it is perhaps more disappointing that the mainstream community including the clergy are guilty of wilfully negligent behaviour.
At any rate, the virus is confirmed to be spreading in the Hassidic community with this announcement.

"Montreal's first confirmed COVID-19 death is a 67-year-old Hasidic man who showed symptoms Sunday night, ultimately succumbing to complications caused by the coronavirus Wednesday night."

This time of year represents the wedding season for Jews with many, many weddings scheduled.
Almost all of these celebrations were cancelled and put off, much to the bitter disappointment of the families involved, where plans and arrangements were made months and months in advance.
But the vast majority did the responsible thing and postponed the event or got married in a tiny ceremony.

Unfortunately not so for all. Several Jewish weddings did go on despite the limitations proposed by the government.

Weddings, especially Jewish weddings are the perfect storm for virus transmission with hundreds of guests, many from out of town all pressed closely together. The traditional Hora dance has a circle of strangers dancing hand in hand, coupled with hugging and kissing. Just one positive Covid-19 case among the hundreds of guests can lead to disaster and that is just what happened.

I'm not going to call out all the offenders, except for those who went public to defend their decision to hold these events.

Montreal's most prestigious synagogue held a huge wedding on the evening of March 12,  this after the morning's announcement by the Premier banning large gatherings of 250 people or more.

"Hundreds of people attended the wedding on March 12 at Congregation Shaar Hashomayim on Kensington Ave. The ceremony took place the same day Quebec Premier François Legault banned all gatherings of more than 250 people in the province to limit the spread of the coronavirus."   Link

The rabbi of the Westmount's Shar Hashmoyim defended himself and the synagogue;

“We simply did not have enough time to adjust,” Scheier said in his email to congregation members, a copy of which was obtained by the Montreal Gazette. “In fact, the celebration was just about to get underway — the bridal party was having photographs taken — when we learned” of the premier’s comments.

Bullshit, Mr. Rabbi...
The Premier made his announcement in the morning and at 11:30am, newspapers had already published his directive banning gatherings over 250 people.  Iheart radio, including Montreal's CJAD all covered the announcement at 11:27 am.
The announcement would have alarmed everyone involved in the wedding and to pretend that you didn't know about the announcement until it was too late in the afternoon is not credible.

COVID-19: Legault calls for cancellation of all events larger than 250 people

The Canadian Press Staff
Contact

Published Thursday, March 12, 2020 11:26AM EDT Last Updated Thursday, March 12, 2020 5:51PM EDT   LINK

In fact, every media outlet published or broadcast news of the banning of events of more than 250  people before lunch. The wedding went ahead that evening.

So Mr Rabbi, let us not pretend.
A decision was made to hold the event despite the interdiction, a decision that led to an elderly attendee catching the virus and bringing it back to her senior residence in Cote Saint-Luc where two other elderly residents have already caught the virus.
In fact, the same Westmount synagogue held another wedding on the weekend, swearing this time that there were no more than 250 people, including staff in attendance. How responsible!!

There were many other big weddings held, one downtown and one in the west end.

Here is another example of the utter contempt some had in the face of the ban.
This wedding which was obviously responsibly cancelled by the venue was downsized and moved to a kosher restaurant that didn't have any problem holding the event.

Read this Facebook post.

The restaurant defended itself by saying that it didn't break any law because its capacity was much larger.
But as I said before, with dancing, kissing and embracing the many diverse invitees that a Jewish wedding involves, the transmission of the virus is inevitable.
By the way, the comments under this post were devastating, reflecting the furious reaction of most Montreal Jews.

CSL Mayor bravely sounds ominous alarm

Cote Saint-Luc Mayor Mitchell Brownstein was so alarmed by the rampant disobedience in his town that he begged the Quebec government to put his city under lockdown.

"We just want to highlight the fact that we have a bad cocktail in Cote-St-Luc that is going to be explosive," he said. "It started already and because of the fact that so many gatherings have taken place over the last few weeks, we know it's going to not be great."

There's plenty of blame to go around with mostly superior-minded Askenazi Jews returning from Florida and other snowbird locations ignoring the 14-day isolation rule in too large numbers.

"Apartment and condominium dwellers email Côte-St-Luc Mayor Mitchell Brownstein or call him to inform him that there are snowbirds in their buildings just back from Florida or other warm climes who are circulating freely as if it were business as usual, seemingly oblivious to the fact that we are in the grip of a pandemic, that COVID-19 has affected nearly 220,000 people worldwide. 

Our callous disrespect as a community has not gone unnoticed, prompting this sad advisory;

"The province’s director of public health is urging Montrealers to stay out of the city’s west end, where the number of COVID-19 cases is growing.
“Try and minimize, if you’re not from that place, to go over there from other regions,” Horacio Arruda said at Premier François Legault’s daily briefing on the pandemic."

 The situation is so serious that the powers that be set up a special testing site located in the formerly-named Cavendish mall reflecting concern over the propagation of the virus in the area.

How bad the situation remains to be seen, but the propagation of the virus among Montreal's Jewish community has been enormously exacerbated because of the willful and derelict conduct by too many careless and arrogant individuals and too many religious institutions and clergy that thought themselves above the law, perhaps channelling the Hebrew National hot dog company's motto of  "Answering to a higher authority"

After this is over, there needs to be an accounting.

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