“There is not a single Hasidic family that has been untouched,” said Leifer, 34. “It is a plague on a biblical scale.”
The coronavirus has hit the Hasidic Jewish community in the New York area with devastating force, killing influential religious leaders and tearing through large, tight-knit families at a rate that community leaders and some public health data suggest may exceed that of other ethnic or religious groups.
The city does not track deaths by religion, but Hasidic news media report that roughly 700 members of the community in the New York area have died from COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus.
Borough Park is a leafy neighborhood of low-rise buildings and small businesses like the kosher bakeries and Judaica shops on Raoul Wallenberg Way that cater to the local Hasidic population. More than 6,000 people there have tested positive for the virus, with one of the neighborhood’s ZIP codes being the city’s fifth most heavily affected, according to data released by the city.
Other neighborhoods with large Hasidic populations, like South Williamsburg and Crown Heights, have some of the city’s highest levels of positive COVID-19 test results, the data show
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