BROOKLYN (VINnews/Sandy Eller) – Amid assurances by Mayor Bill de Blasio that the city is working closely with community leaders to stem the spread of coronavirus in hard hit Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods, the head of NYC Health + Hospitals’ Test and Trace Corps admitted that his program has few, if any, Yiddish speakers on staff.
Join our WhatsApp groupSubscribe to our Daily Roundup Email
The New York Post (https://bit.ly/3jjoAcJ) reported that the revelation came today as Trace and Test program head Dr. Ted Long was being questioned by City Councilman Mark Levine at an oversight hearing. Seeing an asterisk next to the number of Yiddish speaking contact tracers on official documents, a notation that typically indicates a number of six or less, Levine asked Long to pinpoint the actual number of tracers on staff to reach Yiddish speakers.
Long attempted to tap dance his way out of uncomfortable situation, telling Levine that he had a handful of Yiddish speakers and that aggressive efforts were underway to hire more. Levine blasted Test and Trace on Twitter, saying that Long admitted under further questioning that his program had “between 0 and 5” staffers who were fluent in Yiddish among a corps of 3,600 tracers.
“Yiddish is the 7th most widely spoken language in NYC and even more prevalent in some of the neighborhoods now being hardest hit by covid. We need to do better than this,” tweeted Levine.
Ironically, today’s news comes nearly a week after City Councilman Daniel Rosenthal posted video to Twitter of a city vehicle broadcasting COVID messages to his District 27 constituents in Yiddish.
“Once again Yiddish announcements are made by The City in Kew Gardens Hills, a neighborhood were relatively few people speak or understand it. Someone please tell @NYCMayor that not all Jews speak Yiddish. A little research goes a long way. Once is amusing, twice is insulting,” tweeted Rosenthal on September 25th.
City officials said that they hope to hire 21 Yiddish, Hebrew and Russian speaking contact tracers. According to Department of Health statistics, Borough Park, with a positivity rate of 6.51 percent, is part of a Southern Brooklyn cluster whose case growth rate is 1.53 times the citywide rate, while Williamsburg’s positivity rate of 2.06 percent is 3.34 times the citywide rate.
While anything is possible, tracers were more likely to be hired if they were people of color. The group defined as peple of color is very unlikely to speak Yiddish.
Let them go to Gravesend. There is the highest rate of Corona reinfection. Chasidim don’t even live in Gravesend.
The City contact tracers need a lesson in “sensitivity training”. We specifically told a contact tracer that as orthodox jew can not and will not answer phone call or respond to a text message on the sabbath, from sundown friday to sundown saturday. naturally, come shabbos, every hour the phone rings and a message is left by the hhc contact tracer. After shabbos we called back. We clearly explained the situation and the reason we didnt respond or answer. We went so far as to tell them, that the coming week would be rosh hashana and we would not answer or respond to them from sundown friday to sundown sunday night. we repeated this message every day for a week. sure enough, the 1st day rosh hashana the phone rang, and rang again, and again and again. each successive caller got a bit more aggressive in their tone. by the second day of rosh hashana the messages went to threatening to send someone to the house if we dont respond.
Thisprogram , like all other government run programs, is poorly run, its members poorly trained and sorely lacking in the common sense department.
Nothing personal, but the lady pictured above, being obese, is a prime candidate for a Covid death g-d forbid. When someone obese comes down with Corona looking like that, it is almost a death sentence.