Mazel Tov! Decades-old Affront to the Orthodox Community Corrected by the 48th District Voters

As the results trickle in, past mid-night, Chaim Deutsch is now well ahead of his opponent David Storobin, to represent the 48th Council District, with a lead of over 2,500 votes. With that, a decades-long affront to the Orthodox community will be corrected, by doubling the Orthodox representation in City Council.

The Orthodox Jewish population today amounts to 3.99% of the NYC population and around 5% (and according to at-least one analysts 7%) of it's democratic primary voters. Still, the Orthodox representation in the City Council is less than 2 percent.

Now, of course you can't have each sub-group represented exactly according to its population size, but in our case our representation was higher and was deliberately lowered two decades ago to the benefit of minority communities. During most of the 1980s and in the early 1990s Southern Brooklyn had two Orthodox Jewish representatives: Susan D. Alter and Noach Dear. During the 1992 redrawing of the City Council districts, large Orthodox populations of these districts where bunched into one district, eliminating one Orthodox seat.

At the time, the late and legendary Rabbi Moshe Sherer AH decried the elimination of the second Orthodox district as "an absolute affront to New York City's Jewish community, and particularly its Orthodox Jewish community."

This year - with the Orthodox communities far outgrowing its 1980 population - the Redistricting Commission had ample opportunity to right the decades-old wrong against the Orthodox community. Instead, it doubled down, by further slicing and dicing the 48th council-manic district where the Orthodox community had a good shot to elect one of its own to the City Council.

“This proposal is unfair and will reduce the voice of the large and growing Orthodox Jewish community and its representation in City Hall. These lines are harmful to southern Brooklyn’s Jewish community. That’s why I am calling on the Districting Commission to reject them," the only Orthodox City council representative - reelected to night by a huge margin despite a heated campaign against him - David Greenfield, said in a statement referring to the newest map.

Fortunately, the 48th district voters doubled the community's representation in city council. Chaim will undoubtedly serve all constituents equally and whole-heartedly, and he never wanted this race to be fought or won on religious or ethnic identity. Still, as a bonus, Orthodox Jews in NYC will benefit from doubling its representation in City Council, with another member who lives their live and breaths their issues, after it was halved twenty years ago. I thank the voters of the 48th Council district for that.

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