NY Hasidic enclave to be shuttered

(JTA) — The county health commissioner in upstate New York’s Orange County issued an order Monday closing schools serving students from Kiryas Joel, a community made up of mostly Satmar Hasidic Jews.

The village has the highest COVID positivity rate of any town or village in the county, according to the commissioner’s order, with 27.6 percent of COVID tests confirming a positive result in a three-day average. Schools for whom a majority of students come from Kiryas Joel and Palm Tree, a town that overlaps with Kiryas Joel and which is also largely Hasidic, will be closed for at least two weeks...