5780 was probably the toughest year in decades in the US, but it was also a year full of heroes
A year’s top stories are eternally doomed to be sad news, it appears. Even a year such as the one ending now, with its septennial Siyum HaShas celebration, must wallow in misery.
The first half of 5780 was enveloped in an ever-faster whirl of hate, anti-Semitic outbursts, and actual violence that culminated in a terrorist attack in Jersey City and a fatal stabbing at a Monsey Chanukah tish. Even without those massacres, the Anti-Defamation League marked 2019 as the year of the most anti-Semitic activity in America in its century of existence.
This past year was witness to what no eye should see: vicious assaults on Jews on the streets of Brooklyn, official bodies accusing Jews in Rockland County of “plotting a takeover,” portrayals of the yeshivah education system as fostering ignorance, a tsunami of atrocious online comments wishing the very worst on Jews, county executives and village mayors openly conspiring on how to legalize Jews off their lawns — it seemed things couldn’t get worse.
But they did. The coronavirus, which crept out of a bat or pangolin at a Chinese seafood market, pounced with ferocity on New York. By the time it moved on, more than 25,000 lives had been lost.
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