What Happened Today: September 23, 2022
New York bail reform possibly driving up crime rates; Japan using traveler rebates to boost sinking Yen; The Risks and Rewards of Uman
The Big Story
New York State published a long-awaited update to its crime statistics on Wednesday that suggests the state’s bail reform measures put in place at the start of 2020 could have been a significant driver of the higher rates of crime, particularly outside of New York City. The 2020 reforms sought to mitigate the problems with the state’s cash bail policies, which often led to the pre-trial detention of defendants who were unable to afford the cash bail. Indeed, in New York City, 87% of those arrested in 2018 could not initially pay their bail and spent some period of time in detention. But critics of the reforms feared that a radical shift away from pre-trial detention measures could lead to a spike in repeat offenses while defendants await trial—a concern that appears to have come to fruition.
In an analysis of the newly released data, City Journal found that “offenders arraigned in 2020 were significantly more likely to get rearrested than those arraigned in 2019,” before the reforms were enacted. With defendants still awaiting trial from arrests this year, it’s unclear if that trend will continue for 2021. But assuming “2021 rates will converge to 2020 rates in time, then we can expect a durable increase of between 5 and 9 percentage points” of defendants being arrested again, according to City Journal.
The brief time span of the data and the mitigating factors of the COVID-19 pandemic potentially mean overtime rates of rearrest could fluctuate, but with nearly every category of crime except for murder rising in New York City this month, lawmakers from both sides of the aisle are already coming out in increasing numbers against the 2020 reforms. Earlier this week a bipartisan group held a press conference on Long Island calling for Gov. Kathy Hochul to rein in bail reforms. “This isn’t a Democratic or Republican issue. It’s about the safety of our residents,” said Freeport Mayor Robert Kennedy (D). “We need to all get together and adjust these bail reform laws in the near future.”
Read More: https://www.city-journal.org/new-yorks-bail-reform-has-increased-crime
In the Back Pages: The Risks and Rewards of Uman During the Russian Invasion
The Rest
→ While in New York City this week for the meeting of the U.N. General Assembly, Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced that his country would be resuming visa-free travel for the first time since the start of the pandemic. Japan had allowed visitors to stay in the country for up to 90 days without a visa and just before the pandemic had seen a major tourism boom, with an all-time high of 32 million visitors in 2019. Now that number has dropped by more than 99%. Infection rates in Japan have receded considerably, as has the value of the yen, which now sits at its lowest level against the dollar in decades. Kishida also announced coupons and rebates for travelers—and notably did so from a city that is still struggling to revive its economy and tourism industry as the pandemic wanes.
→ Number of the Day: $200 million
The amount Boeing will pay the Securities and Exchange Commission in a settlement, after the company misled investors in the wake of two deadly crashes by offering false statements about the safety of the 737 MAX after each. “In times of crisis and tragedy, it is especially important that public companies and executives provide full, fair, and truthful disclosures to the markets,” Gary Gensler, SEC chairman, said upon announcing the settlement. Boeing “failed in this most basic obligation.” Following the first crash in October 2018, which killed 189 people, Boeing released a statement claiming that its plane “is as safe as any airplane that has ever flown the skies.” Following the second crash in March 2019, which killed 157 people, the company’s CEO told reporters that “there was no surprise or gap or unknown,” even though the company had already discovered issues with the flight control system that it had not disclosed to the Federal Aviation Administration.
→ PayPal has closed the accounts of several groups that publicly opposed mandates and lockdowns during the pandemic, including UsforThem, a U.K. organization that advocated against school closures, and Law or Fiction, a group of lawyers who opposed general lockdowns and who called PayPal’s recent move “a blatant assault on free speech.” Last week, PayPal also closed the accounts of news website The Daily Sceptic. Owners of these accounts have not been able to access their funds, which remain frozen, and have been left wondering what motivated the closures. “You wonder where this has come from,” the director of UsforThem said. “It does seem a little odd for a U.S. company to pay such interest in the views of U.K. campaign groups.”
→ As Amazon builds out its delivery capabilities, even announcing its first drone delivery center this past summer, it has hired thousands of drivers to rush boxes cross-country. A new study from The Wall Street Journal has found that many of those drivers had failed to pass standard Department of Transportation (DOT) safety checks and that “trucking contractors that worked frequently for Amazon were more than twice as likely as all other similar companies to receive bad unsafe driving scores.” According to the Journal, “39% of the frequent Amazon contractors” received scores that would normally warrant the DOT to take action, though the Journal did not mention whether any DOT actions were ultimately taken. Amazon has pushed back against these claims, insisting that “its contractors had a rate of fatalities per vehicle mile about 7% lower than the industry average in 2020” and that the company “offers condolences to families of people killed in crashes that involve its contractors.”
Read More: https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-trucks-crash-safety-11663793491
→ Tweet of the Day:
→ In this chummy exchange between the C-suite of the American banking industry and the House Financial Services Committee, which is tasked with overseeing said industry, CEOs and Rep. Trey Hollingsworth (R-IN) celebrate a congressional staffer’s new position. “Starting on Monday,” Hollingsworth says of his congressional staffer, “she becomes a Bank of America team member.” The CEO of Bank of America, Brian Moynihan, smiles. “Her father already works for us,” he says to laughs. Opensecrets.org, a nonprofit that works to follow money in politics, has compiled a list of more than 200 congressional staffers who are working or have worked on committees overseeing finance and who have deep ties to the financial and banking industries.
→ At least 1,400 Chinese scientists who came to the United States for academic or corporate research positions returned to China in 2021, a drastic 22% spike from 2020, according to a new analysis released by researchers at MIT, Harvard, and Princeton University. With more money and status in recent decades, China universities and research centers have become a competitive destination for scientists who previously gravitated by and large to U.S. institutions. But the COVID-19 pandemic and an uptick of surveillance and criminal investigations of academics with Chinese ties under the Trump administration drove an unprecedented number of U.S.-based Chinese researchers away, including widely known academics and one winner of the Fields Medal, which is sometimes called the Nobel Prize for mathematics. Even as the Justice Department under the Biden administration called off future investigations earlier this year, researchers cite ongoing concerns about state surveillance as a leading factor in their decision to leave the United States.
→ With a custom-made boat and two oars, the 27-year-old explorer who goes by Ellen Magellan says she thinks it’ll take her about seven years to become the first person to row around the world. The $60,000 vessel includes a sleeping cabin and a design that should “self-right” if it capsizes at sea. “I haven’t yet slept in 40-foot waves, but I did some off-shore trials in the North Sea,” she said. She hopes to raise money for the boat and various charities while she documents her voyage, which began earlier this month when she departed from the coast of Texas, with a plan to move along Florida before heading to Cuba and Haiti. “I can’t speak for the open ocean as I haven’t been there, but I have been dreaming about it for years and years.”
→ Graph of the Day:
If current trends of religious affiliation hold, the majority of Americans will self-identify as atheist, agnostic, or “nothing in particular” by the year 2070, according to the Pew Research Center. This would mark a seismic transformation in a single century; in 1972, less than 5% of Americans identified as unaffiliated while 90% identified as Christian. “This accelerating trend is reshaping the U.S. religious landscape,” Pew says, “leading many people to wonder what the future of religion in America might look like.” The study’s authors do note that their categories are more rigid than the messiness of spiritual belief and practice and are unable to accommodate, for instance, people who identify as agnostic but also Christian, or as atheist and Jewish.
Programming Note: The Scroll will be off for the Jewish New Year next week and will return on Wednesday. Shana tova to all who celebrate.
For full coverage of Rosh Hashanah, visit Tablet’s holiday page.
Additional reporting and writing provided by The Scroll’s associate editor, David Sugarman
TODAY IN TABLET:
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If any other ethnic group in the United States* was being violently attacked on the streets of a major city with such numbing repetitiveness, a major civil rights investigation would follow (*except for Asians).
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SCROLL TIP LINE: Have a lead on a story or something going on in your workplace, school, congregation, or social scene that you want to tell us about? Send your tips, comments, questions, and suggestions to scroll@tabletmag.com.
The Risks and Rewards of Uman during the Russian Invasion
By David Spinrad
Every year, followers of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, a 19th-century Hasidic master who advocated serving God without despair, come from all over the world to celebrate the Jewish new year in Uman, a small town in Ukraine. And every year, the number of attendees grows. But with Rosh Hashanah set to begin on Sunday night, the preeminent question in Breslov circles is this: Who will make the pilgrimage to a country now seven months into a Russian invasion?
Around the globe, many Jews spend the days leading up to Rosh Hashanah by saying Selichot and securing the shofars, apples, honey, and other unique elements of the chag to mentally prepare for the judgment of the New Year. Some of us will spend the two days of the holiday at our local synagogues. Others will travel a bit to pray with a special chazzan or to hear inspiration from a personal rabbi. Yet an increasing number travel to Ukraine, taking to heart Rebbe Nachman’s advice that “the most important thing is to spend Rosh Hashanah by me,” at his grave in Uman. Even with the travel restrictions last year because of COVID-19, an estimated 30,000 made the pilgrimage.
Seemingly everywhere today, devotion has become a rote exercise, and remaining religious in an increasingly secular world has become an uphill struggle. Amid such surroundings, Rebbe Nachman’s encouragement to “never ever despair—just be bsimcha (happy),” uttered some 250 years ago, continues to resonate. Indeed, many people—young and old—are turning to Rebbe Nachman’s teachings today.
It’s been curious, then, to see how Breslover thought has made its way into mainstream ultra-Orthodox circles. A manifestation of that is simply how many people from such diverse backgrounds make the trek to Uman for the holidays.
Given the current war in Ukraine waged by Russia, however, some people are more committed than others to brave discomfort and even danger in order to merit the Rebbe’s promise: that he will personally defend in the Heavenly Court those who visit his graveside and pledge to turn over a new leaf.
Many pilgrims who would attend on a normal year are giving this year the skip, myself included.
“It’s more of an effort to go this year, and I don’t feel the desire now. Although I’ve gone the past six years, I think I’ll either stay home or go to Israel,” says Moshe R., a young Jewish professional in the United States.
Tara Kohl, one of the few women who have been to Uman for Rosh Hashanah, is watching the footage from her friends with envy. “At first I thought, No one is going and I won’t have a place to be as a woman,” Kohl said. But even though she now sees Uman isn’t going to be empty, she’s already made other plans and still has to sit this one out.
Because of the war, no commercial flight will go straight to Ukraine; instead, chartered flights to Moldova, Romania, and other surrounding countries have to be arranged. Some followers are driving more than 20 hours, with many spending Shabbat at Medzhybizh, the gravesite of the Baal Shem Tov (the founder of Hasidism).
Beyond just travel difficulties, though, there is the matter of risk to life. Although Uman is not on the front lines of the current hot-zone battles, the Israeli and U.S. embassies both strongly warn against travel to Ukraine. The U.S. embassy likewise recommends that travelers to Ukraine write out a will before their arrival as the consulate cannot aid Americans once they are in a war zone. But for some pilgrims, the risk is worth it.
“This is the year where you see clearly the relationship each person has with the Rebbe [Nachman],” says Moshe Gordon, an American studying in Israel who has made the pilgrimage this year to Uman. Gordon says he consulted many people about the potential of being attacked by the Russian Army to inform his decision about joining the thousands of Jews who were already there. Rabbi Ephraim Koenig in Tzfat, a city in northern Israel, told Gordon that the distance between Uman and the current heat of battle should keep him out of reach of any rockets. When Gordon spoke to an official in the Ukrainian government (who asks to remain unnamed), he was told Uman may be one of the safer spots right now in Ukraine on account of all the security there for the holiday. “Of course, there is no way to know what will happen. But we believe that Putin is too smart to attack the Jewish pilgrims,” Gordon said. “It would undermine his excuse to wage war against the alleged antisemitic Neo-Nazi elements in the east of Ukraine.”
Among the potential pilgrims, there is also a possible geographic, or perhaps geo-cultural, influence at play. “The American Chassidim are more worried about being in a war zone than their Israeli counterparts,” says Jerry Gruskin, an American living in Jerusalem who runs educational and social programs that attract Breslov enthusiasts. He also ran a kitchen program in Uman in previous years. “For people in Israel, unfortunately, rockets overhead and violence in the streets is a part of their reality.”
As of this weekend preceding Rosh Hashanah, tens of thousands of followers of Rebbe Nachman have already arrived in Uman. There may be curfews, a heavier police presence, and not as much music playing in the streets—but it hasn’t deterred the faithful from making their pilgrimage and preparing to usher in the New Year by their Rebbe’s grave.
David Spinrad is a wondering and wandering Jew who uses writing and photography to bring out the stories of the world.