The coronavirus pandemic is spreading quickly in Israel and abroad, harming Jewish communities across the globe that are trying to find ways to cope with the crisis. Some of these communities responded late and only after a large number of people had already contracted the virus.
For example, if up until a few days ago Chabad members in Crown Heights in Brooklyn were still apathetic and acting normally, and the yeshivot in the neighborhood were still operating regularly, in recent days they began taking preventative steps after dozens of people in the neighborhood fell ill and hundred more are suspected of also being infected. In Borough Park, another Jewish neighborhood in New York with tens of thousands of Jewish residents, 100 people have already been diagnosed with the virus and 500 more are awaiting their test results.
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In one appalling video filmed by Zalman Goldstein, a member of Chabad from a neighborhood with some 20,000 other Chabad followers, he painfully describes the catastrophic situation and expresses his fear that a disaster is looming.
"You don't understand what's going on here. It's a destruction. People aren't willing to say they have sick relatives at home and are afraid to admit it, but there are already dozens, maybe hundreds, who are ill. It's not limited to elderly people. The situation is extremely grave. I beg of you, stay at home. How long can you wait? People need to wake up and see that lives are at risk. Stay at home and don't let anyone visit your elderly relatives. Sadly, every passing hour brings new names of people who have been hospitalized. Wake up and stop being indifferent," he beseeched.
The yeshiva in 770 Eastern Parkway in Crown Heights, the world headquarters of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic Movement, has already been mostly shuttered. The main hall has been closed until local authorities can disinfect it, and likely won't reopen anytime soon; while the side hall remains open – but only to limited minyans where the worshippers maintain a two-yard distance from one another. At the same time, the neighborhood's religious court on Tuesday released an urgent statement to the public ordering the immediate closure of all synagogues and ritual pools for men, to stop the spread of the virus.
Jews in Great Britain – which initially tried containing the pandemic and then altered course after a dramatic spike in the number of contractions and deaths – are also implementing preventative measures. Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, the country's former chief rabbi, called for all public prayer services to be canceled.
The virus that causes coronavirus disease, COVID-19, also hasn't spared South America, where some Jewish leaders in Buenos Aires, Argentina, with a population of around 200,000 Jews, canceled public services and Torah study on Tuesday, after dozens of new coronavirus infections and deaths were reported in the country. Due to the growing number of cases in the general population, people have been instructed to self-quarantine and minimize contact with others.
Synagogues in Iran have been shuttered for several days already, but the number of deaths within the Jewish community continues to rise. In light of the situation, the Chief Rabbi of Tehran, Rabbi Yehudah Grami, presided over a mass prayer service transmitted online via Skype on Wednesday night in the hopes of helping stem the tide of the virus that is threatening the world.
