Who's the Authority?

Just read the most puzzling statement from the Beis Din of Crown Heights [1]:

'First of all, all restrictions from legal and medical authorities obviously must be adhered to.'

This odd designation is repeated again several paragraphs later: 'At this stage, the Badatz defers all such decisions to the local medical and legal authorities.'

Who are the "legal authorities?" Does he mean their antisemite mayor De Blasio or Governor Cuomo? The NYPD? Or does he mean the Dept. of Health?

Since when does a rabbi exhort his adherents to adhere to all restriction and decisions of "legal authorities" with regards to davening, attending minyan, Torah studies of tinokos shel beis rabban? Not only that, he writes "obviously," as if this extraordinary statement is a given.

And who are the "medical authorities?" The CDC? WHO? Dept of Health?

Surely he knows that there are plenty of medical experts who disagreed with the entire social-distancing policy to begin with. So it seems he refers to just those specific medical experts who were 'authorized' by the government as "medical authorities."

Since when is there such a concept as a "medical authority" in Jewish law, beyond one's own doctor, who doesn't necessarily wield any "authority" to speak of? [2]

So do "legal authorities' and "medical authorities" both refer to government? Does he mean that there is one authority but it's both "legal" and "medical?"

This sounds rather authoritarian and un-Jewish if you ask me.

Is this rabbi abusing his rabbinic authority? Or his he neglecting his rabbinic duties by not adjuring his kehila to acknowledge a higher Authority?

Even stranger is the odd contradiction of items two and three:

2. We have been advised that the former restriction against people from the street attending the so-called 'porch minyanim' is no longer a necessity, provided proper social distancing, etc., is maintained.

3. The Badatz... does not consider itself an authority on medical matters. (The original need for the Badatz to intervene was to prevent the mistaken notion that Tefila B'tzibur or other similar halachic requirements supersede concerns of Pikuach Nefesh.).

Wait a minute... the "legal and medical authorities" never banned porch minyanim. The Beis Din did. In fact, the Beis Din had prohibited everyone from engaging in tefila b'tzibur, not just "people from the street" but even people on their porches who had never left their properties.

Does the Beis Din take no responsibility for fanatically enforcing an authoritarian policy well beyond the actual requirements of these so-called authorities?

Hmm...I don't live in that neighborhood and unfortunately have not been able to communicate with those rabbis since I questioned their abuse of authority last year when 500 healthy children were permanently banned from their neighborhood schools by their own instruction.[3] And in that case too, when questioned, the rabbi cited deference to "authorities" and took no responsibility. Hence my visceral reaction when I just read it in this most recent letter.

So again, I am compelled to wonder: who are these rabbis' 'authorities' and to whom do their loyalties lie? Although I have no way to ask them directly, I humbly recommend Crown Heights residents to clarify these bizarre remarks with the rabbis who wrote them.


Notes:
[1] Dated 24 Iyar 5780, i.e. yesterday, Monday, May 18th. Image of letter below.
[2] With regards to a patient with a diagnosed condition, a doctor can wield authority in the realm of healing, v'rapo yerape, but not necessarily in the realm of precaution, as the renowned Rabbi Chaim Brisker once commented.
[3] And 10,000 Jewish children were banned from school in their entire state, without a single word of protest from this Beis Din, or any other for that matter! Shomu shomayim. Umsaymim b'tov.