When the Yiddish newspaper Der Blatt set
out to explain how a massive wedding
for the grandson of the Satmar grand rabbi
took place despite pandemic limits on
gatherings, it waited until after the event
to reveal all the details.
Photos and video from the wedding held Monday in Brooklyn’s Borough Park neighborhood made clear that the first version of the story was accurate.
They show that hundreds, if not thousands, of guests packed into the main synagogue of one faction of Bobov Hasidism on Monday night to celebrate the wedding of the youngest son of Rabbi Ben Zion Halberstam, the grand rabbi of the sect. Videos circulated the next day over WhatsApp showed a packed wedding hall with thousands of people and nomasks in sight. Large tapestries with the words “mazel tov” were hung from a wall to cover windows into the hall.
The wedding is the latest example of the lack of compliance in Hasidic communities with protocolsmeant to stop the spread of the coronavirus. And perhaps more troubling for authorities hoping to stop these events, it is yet another example of the degree to which members of the Hasidic community are willing to keep secret violations of public health guidance that put lives in jeopardy as COVID cases rise across the country and a new more contagious variant of the disease continues to spread in the United States and around the world.
Since the summer, large weddings have been cited asa source of infection in Orthodox communities and of tension between those communities and government authorities.
Community members who have spoken out about the large gatherings at synagogues and wedding halls have been called “mosers,” a term that translates to informers but can carry the threat of physical violence.