Credit Where It’s Due

But as a self-declared progressive de Blasio’s views on most issues are assuredly far from mine. And yet twice in this space I have lauded his actions as mayor and suggested that the Orthodox Jewish community publicly express appreciation to him. In both cases this non-Jewish lefty did far better by our community than did his Jewish centrist predecessor Michael Bloomberg.

When the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 2014 that New York City had a right to refuse religious groups access to public school space for services Mayor de Blasio made clear he would not exercise that prerogative choosing instead to continue the practice of granting off-hours use of public school facilities to some 80 houses of worship. He said he stood by his “belief that a faith organization playing by the same rules as any community nonprofit deserves access…. They play a very very important role in terms of providing social services and other important community services and I think they deserve that right.”

And a year later when Mr. de Blasio rescinded the Bloomberg administration’s regulation requiring mohelim to procure parental consent for metzizah b’peh I wrote that his action could be described using two of his favorite adjectives “historic” and “transcendent.” It was historic I observed “because governments don’t easily or often concede of their own accord that policies they’ve vociferously promoted for years are counterproductive and require immediate reversal.” It will be recalled that Bloomberg had characterized his own constituents who opposed the regulation as “10 000 guys in black hats outside [my] office screaming.”