Prominent rabbis advocate closing synagogues to fight virus, as rabbinate demurs
Rabbi David Stav calls on his congregations to pray alone; Eliezer Melamed also says staying home preferable, but chief rabbi insists orders haven’t changed
For the first time since the coronavirus outbreak began, several prominent rabbis on Tuesday advocated closing synagogues and not holding communal prayers to avoid spreading the COVID-19 disease.
To stem the outbreak, the Health Ministry on Saturday banned gatherings of more than ten people and highlighted that the ban extended to gatherings for religious activities — the minimum number of men for an Orthodox prayer quorum, or minyan, is 10 — and mandated that people participating in such activities maintain a distance of at least two meters from one another.
Israel’s Ashkenazi chief rabbi, David Lau, was photographed Sunday morning demonstrating a personal example to followers, as he prayed in a quorum outdoors with at least two meters of space between worshipers.
But over the following days, the Health Ministry instruction became increasingly more stringent. On Tuesday it ordered all Israelis not to leave home unless necessary, saying they should even avoid hosting family and friends.
On Tuesday, Lau issued a statement saying the new guidelines had not changed the Chief Rabbinate’s directives, saying prayer was allowed in synagogues with ten people adhering to the two-meter rule.
However, other high profile rabbis, including Rabbi David Stav and Rabbi Eliezer Melamed, called for closing synagogues and for each person to pray alone to stem the outbreak.
Stav, the chairman of the modern Orthodox Tzohar rabbinical organization, said that after consulting health experts and Torah scholars, “I understood there was no other choice. If we desire life, we must close every gathering venue, and that includes synagogues.”
Stav, who also serves as the rabbi of the town of Shoham, east of Tel Aviv, wrote on Facebook: “For the first time in my life, I am asking members of my community to close the synagogues. This isn’t easy.”
He said his decision was made “out of great love and responsibility for each and every member of the community,” expressing hope that the lights in the synagogues would be relit soon.
“Meanwhile we will gather in our homes to study, pray and get things done, and we will strengthen the deep bonds between each other using the digital means we have been blessed with in this generation,” he concluded.
Melamed, who heads the Har Bracha yeshiva and is the settlement’s rabbi, told residents that is was better to hold all prayers alone rather than in synagogues, adding: “That is how I am behaving.”
He didn’t forbid praying in synagogues, but added that bringing children along wasn’t allowed and that where adhering to the Health Ministry guidelines wasn’t possible, entering wasn’t permitted.
Melamed, who has a weekly column in the Besheva religious right-wing weekly, said people over the age of 60 should take even more care not to go to synagogue.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with the chief rabbis and other ultra-Orthodox representatives on Sunday evening to convince segments of the Haredi community to shutter their schools, after they defied Health Ministry directives designed to contain the virus. All other schools in the country have been shut down by the state to stem the spread.
Following the meeting, rabbis Chaim Kanievsky and Gershon Edelstein, prominent leaders venerated by hundreds of thousands of followers in the Lithuanian sect, agreed to a proposal backed by Netanyahu that would see no more than 10 students learning in a single classroom. Kanievsky last week had ordered his followers to ignore the Health Ministry’s coronavirus restrictions by keeping schools open.
The number of Israelis diagnosed with coronavirus rose to 427 on Wednesday morning.
