The annual Simchas Bais Hashoeva Sukkot celebration in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn will still take place this year, though it will be scaled down this year due to coronavirus, CrownHeights.info reported.
“It’s going to be a live thing going through the neighborhood,” Simchas Bais Hashoeva organizer Rabbi Yisroel Shemtov explained to CrownHeights.info. “We are doing it this year on a truck with music and singers on it. People at home will be able to come out of their houses to enjoy.”
Rabbi Shemtov said "we cannot encourage" a public event taking place on Kingston Ave. "because once you start, you don’t know who goes in or who goes out.”
He noted that this year's event will necessarily be for a limited time each night due to the anticipated noise from the truck, despite traditionally carrying on all night.
The organizers said the event may also include a video release of the celebration from past years. "From the days that there was 15,000 people, and it took Hatzalah 10 minutes to get through. It was wall to wall.”