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He represented the Orthodox neighborhood of Borough Park, Brooklyn, when he sat on the City Council, and that community coalesced behind de Blasio when he ran for public advocate and then mayor. De Blasio has courted donors from the Orthodox community and gave at least two of them, Jona S. Rechnitz and Jeremiah Reichberg, spots on his first inauguration committee.
In 2015, he signed a bill sponsored by David G. Greenfield, a former council member whose district in Brooklyn includes many Orthodox Jews, that allowed private and parochial schools to hire security guards at a cost of nearly $20 million a year to the city.
“People look at him as a person who has the community’s interests at heart,” said Rabbi David Niederman, the executive director and president of the United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg.
But that close relationship has also led to problems, and has complicated how the mayor has dealt with the ultra-Orthodox community when it comes to sensitive issues.
Rechnitz and Reichberg, for example, were at the center of a federal police corruption and bribery trial where Rechnitz offered up embarrassing details about how donations had won him access to the highest levels of power at City Hall. De Blasio denied any wrongdoing and faced no charges.
The latest example of the mayor’s complicated relationship with this community came last week, when de Blasio declared a public health emergency in ultra-Orthodox communities in Williamsburg, requiring unvaccinated individuals to receive the vaccine or face a fine.
Some critics accused the mayor of acting too slowly; the outbreak, affecting now close to 300 people, first began in the fall.
“Mayor de Blasio has a tremendous weak spot for his old council constituency,” said Menashe Shapiro, a political consultant and founder of Shapiro Consulting Group. “He has always been willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.”
That criticism has surfaced in an ongoing investigation by the Department of Investigation into whether the de Blasio administration, for political reasons, interfered with a review of whether yeshivas, ultra-Orthodox Jewish private schools, are providing proper secular education.
Yet some members of the ultra-Orthodox community still accuse de Blasio of having overstepped his authority by issuing the vaccination declaration, and there are indications that a lawsuit is being readied.
But the mayor and his supporters say the administration was wise to act when it did. City officials said they had noticed an increase in infections after Purim last month, and became worried that there could be another spike with the upcoming Passover holiday. The mayor said public health, not his relationship with the Orthodox community, was his priority.
“I can say that we try always to respect religious rights, religious customs, but when it comes to public health, we see a problem emerge, we have to deal with it aggressively,” de Blasio said last week.
Niederman said his nonprofit had been working closely with city health officials to counter misinformation that the measles vaccine was dangerous, a strategy he felt was working.
“I didn’t know this was coming but I see the way the mayor came into the community to tell the community,” the rabbi said. “Him coming down personally, people will remember that.”
Brad Lander, a councilman from Brooklyn who holds de Blasio’s former seat, said he thought the city seemed slow to respond to the crisis, but added that the mayor’s relationship with the ultra-Orthodox community might have actually helped, especially when compared to past flare-ups.
De Blasio, upon becoming mayor, pledged to revamp the city’s policy on a controversial circumcision ritual that had led to infants becoming infected with herpes. The ultra-Orthodox community largely ignored the policy.
“In those cases, some leaders of the community had a protective point of view that created conflict with city laws,” Lander said. “Now, the recognized community leaders are almost universally on the side of vaccination.”
A Yiddish newspaper, Der Yid, which is associated with Satmar Hasidim, took the extraordinary step of translating an editorial into English that excoriates those who do not believe in being vaccinated: “Senseless! Heartless! Torah-Less and Reckless” read the headline.
“There’s not a lot of agreement in general in the ultra-Orthodox community,” said Greenfield, the former councilman who is now the chief executive of The Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty. “The only two things they appear to now agree on is the Sabbath and vaccinating your children. That didn’t happen by accident. That was a lot of hard work.”
But fears exist about forced vaccinations and whether the ultra-Orthodox community will be stigmatized. The Anti-Defamation League warned against blaming the ultra-Orthodox as the “sole cause” of the measles outbreak.
Agudath Israel of America, an umbrella organization for Hasidic groups, released a statement reinforcing that Orthodox rabbis and leaders are in favor of vaccination. But the statement went on to address what they called “infectious hatred.” The city must make clear that “‘anti-vaxxers’ are not confined to Williamsburg,” said Niederman.
On Thursday, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority said they were investigating an allegation that a city bus driver in Brooklyn at first refused to stop for an Orthodox Jewish passenger and then covered her face and said “measles” as the passenger boarded the bus.
De Blasio quickly condemned the alleged incident on Twitter, saying that he would ensure that it was “thoroughly investigated.”
“It’s a scary thing to think about people being forcefully vaccinated,” said Rabbi David Zwiebel, executive vice-president of Agudath Israel of America. “All of this is taking place against a backdrop of anti-Semitism being on the rise.”
Dr. Jane R. Zucker, assistant commissioner for the Bureau of Immunization at the Health Department, said that no one will be forced to be vaccinated. Instead, the city’s focus is on battling misinformation about the measles vaccine.
The city has placed ads in Yiddish newspapers and done three rounds of robocalls in Yiddish to 30,000 households, in addition to sending mailers to 30,000 households. Just more than 8,000 more people have received the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine this year compared with last year, including 1,000 more vaccinations in Williamsburg and Borough Park from March to April.
Gary Schlesinger, the chief executive of Parcare, a health and medical center with locations in Williamsburg and Borough Park, said that the city realized how quickly the outbreak could grow out of control.
“They panicked,” he said. “Maybe it’s too drastic. I don’t see how you can fine people. But this is an important step to contain this.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.