Sick in the heads: What the press is saying on October 2

1. Friday the rabbi tested positive: While the US is going bonkers over  President Donald Trump coming down with COVID-19, in Israel the big news is that Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky has also managed to contract the disease.

• Kanievsky, who at 92 is 18 years Trump’s senior, is seen as the uber powerful head of the non-Hasidic branch of ultra-Orthodox Judaism (known as Lithuanian, or Litvak), with a base of hundreds of thousands of followers who hang on his every word.
• The news that Kanievsky has the disease leads several Israeli news sites Friday morning, and not just in the Haredi press. Even left-leaning and decidedly not ultra-Orthodox Haaretz leads off with the news, at least in Hebrew. All of the stories run the same statement on his behalf, which says he is feeling fine, and calls on people to pray for his health.
• Kanievsky’s initial wavering on the seriousness of the virus, which has continued to some degree in the second wave, is regarded as a major factor that led to mass infections in the ultra-Orthodox community. While most reports don’t throw that in his face, there are references to it, as well as the wider phenomenon of runaway infection rates in the Haredi community (more on that lower down).
• “Just yesterday, a video was published showing Rabbi Kanievsky at his home as he urged people to get checked, even over the intermediate days [of Sukkot.] Rabbi Kanievsky claimed that it is a matter of saving a life and instructed [people] to get checked for the coronavirus,” reports Channel 12. “Rabbi Kanievsky is thought of as less stringent when it comes to keeping coronavirus regulations. This was the first time that a film was published showing him talking about the pandemic himself, after months in which instructions in his name were published through others.”
• The report may give him too much credit. Kan news actually includes the video, in which a student explains to the rabbi that getting checked means going into isolation and asking if it is allowed. The rabbi, looking frail and engrossed in a book, mumbles first “life-threatening danger” and then “yes.”
• Israel Hayom reports that the rabbi has been in isolation since sometime after Rosh Hashanah, which was the last time he received the public, though as the video shows, isolation may not really be isolation. “His grandkids come in and out of his room all the time, and the rabbi even took part in building the sukkah at his home.”

• And there’s more. Haaretz reports that he broke isolation on Saturday night and received the public at his home, including his driver, who was tested on Saturday night and confirmed to have the virus.
• The paper reports that a statement on the rabbi’s behalf claims that “all the sick isolated themselves the moment they felt symptoms. They also said that those who were in contact with the rabbi were people who had been tested and came up negative or those who already recovered.”

2. Pray the man: The Haredi press is naturally much less circumspect. Kikar Shabbat reports that “thousands” of people visited the rabbi after Yom Kippur (when the country was supposed to be under lockdown) though they were behind a clear sheet.

• And there’s a whole lot of praying going on. In Behadrei Haredim, another ultra-Orthodox news site, the top headline reads “Pray: The minister of Torah Rabbi Kanievsky is positive for coronavirus.”
• Radio Kol Hai runs a whole story on background of the rabbi requesting that people say ten psalms for him, explaining that another rabbi told a story about going to Kanievsky and asking what to do when he is in pain, and got the answer that he should say 10 psalms and then it will pass.
• Rabbi David Lau, the chief Ashkenazi rabbi, is quoted saying in Kan that “We need to unite and raise up our prayers for the swift recovery of the pillar of Torah that the generation is in need of, among all the other sick of Israel.”
• He’s not the only one they are praying for. Kol Hai reports on several other top rabbis who people should also pray for.
• And then of course there is Trump. Jacob Kornbluh of Jewish Insider tweets a screenshot of a message going around Haredi WhatsApp, showing a faux Jewish name given to the president, “Rabbi Daniel Yonatan son of Miriam Hanna,” so that they can pray for him too.

3. Coughfeve: Many in Israel are paying attention to Trump’s health as well.

• Israel Hayom, which a day earlier trumpeted the president as the unquestionable winner of the debate with Joe Biden, reports on what it terms “American political chaos,” in the wake of Trump’s announcement that he has COVID.
• The paper notes that beyond the possibility of him being removed if unable to carry out his duties, it has also thrown the election campaign into turmoil, with the second debate facing possible cancellation, and noting that Trump’s team did not pay any heed to virus guidelines during the first one. And of course, Trump can’t hold large rallies if he is sick.
• But the piece ends with this strange coda: “In the smoke and mirrors of American politics, it’s possible that him dealing with the coronavirus, alongside all the time he will have to tweet on Twitter, will actually end up serving the president well.”
• The paper’s editor Boaz Bismuth tweets out a picture of himself with Trump and wishes him a speedy recovery, “both for your sake and ours. The virus has not only hit you in the last days of your campaign, but also at a time when you are doing many good things to bring peace to the Middle East and for Israel.”
• Haaretz reporter Chaim Levinson mocks the tweet as “for those who can’t wait for the deceased and I,” referring to a term used to make fun of those who mark someone’s death by making it about themselves and putting pictures of them together on social media.
• It’s not just Bismuth. Channel 13 rounds up all the other Israelis wishing Trump well, from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Health Minister Yuli Edelstein, whom it notes used the occasion to remind everyone that “nobody is immune. Keep the rules, it’s for our health.”
• Ynet is one of several Israeli outlets that pick up a CNN report that several White House staffers knew that Hope Hicks was sick before she flew with the president and held a press briefing. It also notes that papers in China are dunking over Trump, who had blamed them for the virus.
• Channel 12’s Yona Leibzon calls the news a “major blow” to Trump and says that his attempts to question the health and mental acuity of Biden have now come back on him “like a boomerang.”

4. Community spread: Even before Kanievsky and Trump came down with the virus, the press in Israel was having a field day with Israel’s out of control virus numbers and looking at how much the ultra-Orthodox are contributing to the crisis.

• A comment from coronavirus czar Ronni Gamzu, that the ultra-Orthodox account for 40 percent of infections, offered without any data to back it up, nonetheless made several headlines, with most reports noting that 40% is far higher than the approximately 12% of the population the community makes up.
• In ToI, Nathan Jeffay writes that some doctors are blaming the ultra-Orthodox for irresponsible behavior, while others are less keen to point fingers.
• Dror Mevorach, head of internal medicine at Hadassah Hospital, tells him that “I do think that, in some sections, irresponsible behavior no doubt encouraged the spread of disease, among themselves and in Israel.”
• But Shaare Zedek hospital head Jonathan Halevy is quoted saying that: “It’s borderline racism to come with accusations [of disproportionate ultra-Orthodox responsibility]. You see pockets of disobedience in every sector of Israeli society; you saw it in restaurants, cafes and pubs.”
• There’s no such compunction in Yedioth Ahronoth, which has a large headline on its front page reading “the carelessness of the Haredi community will cause a disaster.”
• The paper disingenuously puts the headline in quotes, though there is no actual quote of anyone saying that. The closest it comes is quoting a doctor saying that “there’s no place for the wide carelessness and cynicism among some parts of the Haredi community in the coronavirus wards.”
• A prominent headline in Israel Hayom claims that “this is not incitement, but saving lives.” Their paper’s Yehuda Shelzinger explains that the paper’s policy has always been to treat the ultra-Orthodox with kid gloves.
• “Odd halachic rulings about nose-picking on the Sabbath were not reported here, as they are in some other publications,” he writes. “But there is criticism that must be published. Sensitively, gently, and with great love for our brethren. We are in critical days. Days in which we are witnessing a horror story … We cannot ignore the fact that the Haredi world has many widespread, serious outbreaks. This is a fact, and cannot be interpreted away. The Haredi way of life makes it very difficult to fight COVID. The crowding, the large families, the synagogues and tish celebrations all lead to outbreaks.”

5. Stop the sukkah hop: In Haaretz, Amos Harel writes that what seems bad now is expected to only get worse as the holiday drag on: “The rise has accelerated in the past two weeks and is expected to show an even greater leap as a result of the combination of the dense crowds in some of the Haredi synagogues on the High Holy Days and during Sukkot, and the mass exodus of yeshiva students heading home for a break at the conclusion of Yom Kippur. In most cases, the yeshiva students violated a prior agreement with the government by going home without first being tested for the coronavirus.”

• Walla news reports that cops are gearing up to bolster enforcement over the holidays, deploying thousands of officers, who will first go ought to explain the rules to folks before handing out fines.
• According to Kan, police have already begun, holding a meeting on Thursday with top rabbis to warn them to not allow large gatherings over the holiday. According to the report, police say that unlike on Yom Kippur, they will be up in the Haredi neighborhoods to keep them in check.
• Hope they bring a dictionary. Yedioth highlights a video from Thursday that shows a Haredi man asked by the cops to make an announcement over their loudspeaker in Yiddish in Beitar Illit telling people to go home. Instead, the man announces “Go home, and come back in a few minutes when they leave,” with the cops none the wiser.
• “Instead of laughing you can only cry, given the infection numbers,” the paper writes.

המשטרה ביקשה מבחור ברחוב שיסביר באידיש שאסור לאנשים להסתובב ברחובות ולהתקהל.
המתנדב אמר להם ברמקול תעלו הביתה לכמה דקות עד שהמשטרה תלך.
ישראל 2020 pic.twitter.com/1T4gIToKm7

— Sharon Idan | שרון עידן (@sharonidan) October 1, 2020

• To end on a sweet note, Channel 12’s Menachem Horowitz writes that there is something nice in the fact that people who normally visit family over the holiday can’t and so there are a lot more sukkahs going up. “The images of sukkahs adorning patios and shared courtyards can remind us to take a moment to think about all the baggage we have to keep us together, even in challenging times.”

In light of mounting evidence for the importance of ventilation, thinking of erecting an open-air booth behind my house, thatching it with branches for shade, and dwelling in it for about a week to see how that goes.

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— Yoni Appelbaum (@YAppelbaum) October 1, 2020