In Israel, the Jewish High Holidays clash with a new coronavirus lockdown !

Naftali Herstik still remembers the first time he “stood beside the pillar,” meaning that he led Rosh Hashanah services from the central synagogue lectern at which a cantor chants the liturgy.  It was 69 years ago, and he was 4½ years old. The heir of a long dynasty of cantors and rabbis, Herstik was already a famed child prodigy and had accompanied his father at previous celebrations.  

He has observed Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, from the well of a temple ever since — until last week. Jerusalem’s Great Synagogue, where Herstik served as chief cantor from its founding in 1981 to 2009, has been closed for the first time in its history because of the COVID-19 pandemic.  For many Jews worldwide, nothing is as sacred as the prayers of the Jewish High Holidays, which are intended to be sung, lustily, in a communal space. Their lack this year has left Herstik distraught.  

“It is difficult to describe the depth of sorrow seeing this synagogue closed on Rosh Hashanah,” said Herstik, who immigrated to Israel from Hungary as a child.  The coronavirus has forced adjustments to, and sometimes outright cancellations of, religious rituals across the globe. Many Christians and Jews found their respective Easter and Passover celebrations curtailed, while for Muslims, Ramadan observances and the annual hajj to Mecca were drastically scaled back.

Here in Israel, the holiest period on the Jewish calendar — which culminates Monday with Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement — is coinciding with the first reimposition of a national coronavirus lockdown anywhere in the world. After initially earning praise for its handling of the pandemic, the Israeli government is now under fire for mismanagement that allowed a second wave of infections to sweep the country.  

The government has been paralyzed for months as public health officials warned of a looming disaster while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ultra-Orthodox coalition partners threatened to walk out on their power-sharing deal if synagogues were not allowed to remain open.  On Friday, Israeli lawmakers continued tussling over the details of a bill that would shutter all nonessential businesses and ban employees from going to their workplaces but that could allow synagogues to host up to 20 worshipers praying indoors.  

Dr. Hagai Levine, chairman of the Israeli Assn. of Public Health Physicians, a professor of epidemiology at Hebrew University and an advisor to the government, criticized the proposed policy as “the opposite of what we should do.”  “Keeping synagogues open on Yom Kippur sends the wrong message,” Levine said. Permitting gatherings in closed spaces — “the main way people get infected,” he said — will make an already-grim situation “much worse.”  Israeli social workers hold signs during a demonstration protesting the economic situation in the central Israeli town of Kfar Ahim, Thursday, July 9, 2020. 

With a new outbreak of coronavirus devastating Israel's economy, one of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's closest confidants was dispatched on to a TV studio on a recent day to calm the nerves of a jittery nation. Instead, he dismissed the public's economic pain as "BS."

Here in Israel, the holiest period on the Jewish calendar — which culminates Monday with Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement — is coinciding with the first reimposition of a national coronavirus lockdown anywhere in the world. After initially earning praise for its handling of the pandemic, the Israeli government is now under fire for mismanagement that allowed a second wave of infections to sweep the country.  

The government has been paralyzed for months as public health officials warned of a looming disaster while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ultra-Orthodox coalition partners threatened to walk out on their power-sharing deal if synagogues were not allowed to remain open.  On Friday, Israeli lawmakers continued tussling over the details of a bill that would shutter all nonessential businesses and ban employees from going to their workplaces but that could allow synagogues to host up to 20 worshipers praying indoors.