December 6, 2022
Mayor Eric Adams
Speaker Adrienne Adams
City Hall
New York, NY 10005
Dear Mayor Adams and Speaker Adams,
Last week, Mayor Adams announced an aggressive increase in the city’s efforts to involuntarily detain New Yorkers who are perceived to be suffering from a mental health crisis, giving the NYPD significantly more scope and authority to detain people. Rather than directing those who need services to long-term opportunities for care and support, or allowing New Yorkers with psychiatric disabilities their right to exist in public space, we fear that this new policy would limit the rights of our families, friends and neighbors and expose them to further disruption and potentially traumatic or dangerous interactions with police. A policy that relies on handcuffs and coercion will leave our city in greater pain. We, the undersigned Jewish clergy, call on the Mayor to rescind this directive and instead invest in genuine care and compassion, which means housing, services, and supports.
We agree with Mayor Adams that we must find solutions to the crisis facing unhoused New Yorkers suffering from mental illness. Throughout the centuries, Jewish tradition has both acknowledged mental health as a human need, and exhorted us to assist those struggling to find treatment and solace not in isolation but within a communal context. The early 20th-century writings of Rav Kook acknowledge the essential need for mental health to be considered in concert with physical health, community belonging and relationships, and spiritual wellbeing. The 18th century teacher Rabbi Nachman of Breslov taught us that emotional struggle is, in fact, inherent to the human experience. The Talmud itself exhorts us to tell others of our anxiety and distress, in order to experience relief. Removing individuals in psychiatric distress who are not a danger to themselves or others from their neighborhoods or public spaces serves not only to further isolate and stigmatize these New Yorkers, and it denies them the community contact that is necessary for each person to thrive. We are distressed too by the introduction of this policy as part of the administration’s response to the crisis affecting so many in our city experiencing homelessness, and express deep concern at potential violence of additional police encounters proposed as a solution to a systemic lack of resources.
Jewish communities want to see deep investment in mental health prevention services and critical wrap-around support such as housing, peer-based support, affordable healthcare, and access to social services. We are alarmed by the 19% staffing vacancy rate at the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and the 17% vacancy rate at the Department of Social Services, making it impossible for these agencies to serve people. We are also dismayed at the prospect of further cuts to the city agencies that provide these critical services and we urge the Mayor to reverse his plans to reduce city subsidies to NYC Health and Hospitals and institute PEGs for most of our city agencies. We can only provide care and dignity to New Yorkers with true investment and a robust municipal workforce.
Jewish tradition urges us to care for our neighbors, especially when they are in trouble and regardless of cost. We learn from the 19th century Kitzur Shulkhan Arukh [Siman 184:8] that, “if you see that your neighbor is in trouble, and you are able to save him, or to hire others to save him, you are obliged to trouble yourself or to hire others to save him. If (s)he has the money to pay, you may ask her to repay the money you spent to save her.. If she does not have the money, nevertheless, you may not shirk your duty because of this, and you must save her at your own expense. If you refuse to do so, you are guilty of transgressing the negative command, "Do not stand idly by when the blood of your neighbor [is in danger]."
We do not want to be the people who stand by while our neighbor bleeds, or is in deep distress. We are deeply concerned that the Mayor is playing fast and loose with the legal rights of New Yorkers and is not dedicating the resources necessary to close the service gap in mental health services that leaves so many New Yorkers without adequate mental health care. The lives of people dealing with mental health crises won’t be improved by forcing them into treatment, especially if law enforcement is the primary vehicle for doing so. Unless the City of New York adequately invests in the long-term health and well-being of New Yorkers facing mental illness and our chronic lack of housing, our mental health crisis will continue.
Signed,
Rabbi Lauren Grabelle Herrmann
Rabbi Jill Jacobs
Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie
Rabbi Jennie Rosenn
Rabbi Rachel Timoner
Rabbi Shelley Kovar Becker
Rabbi Atara Cohen
Rabbi Emily Cohen
Cantor Mira Davis
Rabbi Barat Ellman
Rabbi Susan L. Falk
Rabbi Paula L. Feldstein
Rabbi Irwin Goldenberg
Rabbi Rachel Goldenberg
Rabbi Lisa Grant
Rabbi Miriam Grossman
Rabbi Jill Hausman
Rabbi Margo Hughes-Robinson
Rabbi Rebecca Lynn Jaye
Rabbi Andrue Kahn
Rabbi Ellen Lippmann
Rabbi Rachel Maimin
Rabbi Marc J. Margolius
Rabbi Joel Mosbacher
Rabbi Hara Person
Rabbi William M. Plevan
Rabbi Max Reynolds
Rabbi Mira Rivera
Cantor Eric Schulmiller
Rabbi Mishael Shulman
Rabbi Abby Stein
Rabbi Burt Visotzky
Rabbi Nancy H. Wiener
Rabbinical & Cantorial Students:
Hadar Ahuvia
Madeleine Fortney
Adam Graubart
Avigayil Halpern
Gabriel Lehrman
Talia Kaplan
Andrew Mandel
Louisa Solomon