Restrictions and rebellion follow New York City’s covid-19 surge

CALL IT THE bonfire of the masks. That was the centrepiece of a large protest on October 6th by ultra-Orthodox Jewish men in Brooklyn’s Borough Park to protest against new state restrictions on mass gatherings. Some chanted “Jewish Lives Matter”. A few hoisted Trump campaign signs. “We are at war,” said Heshy Tischler, a neighbourhood populist running for the city council who has been leading the agitation, the following night. He also allegedly set angry demonstrators on Jacob Kornbluh, a reporter for Jewish Insider, who was attempting to cover the protests. He was called both a “Nazi” and a “moyser”, a Yiddish word meaning informer.