In response to an offensive and anti-Semitic billboard that was displayed in the Jewish Orthodox Five Towns Community with the subtle message that “Jews Spread Disease,” Assemblyman Ari Brown (R-Cedarhurst) wrote a letter to New York State Department of Health Associate Commissioner Sam Miller admonishing the department and bringing to light the department’s subtle bigotry.

“I was appalled, but not surprised, to learn that the NYS Department of Health sent a truck to our Orthodox Jewish community of the Five Towns on Long Island displaying the subtle anti-Semitic trope of ‘the Jew spreading disease.’ Antisemitism should not be a fact of Jewish life, something that we or anyone should simply accept as a way of life,” Brown wrote in the letter.

“Antisemitism is sometimes expressed by people in power in the soft and subtle bias of their words, much of which goes unchallenged. We have seen this disguised bigotry with the targeting of Orthodox Jewish communities by city and state leaders during COVID-19 lockdowns in New York and now with a New York State Department of Health truck riding around Jewish neighborhoods with the rhetoric of, ‘Polio is spreading in Israel, Get immunized now.”’ I will fight anti-Semitism and will not be silent whether it’s from a Government official, media, academic institution, or whomever,” Brown continued in the letter.