Rockland County, N.Y., currently has the highest per capita rate of coronavirus infection in New York State.

 Rockland County, N.Y., currently has the highest per capita rate of coronavirus infection in New York State.

About 25 miles northwest of New York City, local authorities have been waging a losing battle to curb the coronavirus outbreak:

Rockland County has the highest per capita rate of infection in the state, and among the highest in the nation.

The source of the problem lies in small pockets of the county that are home to a large number of Orthodox Jewish residents, some of whom, according to authorities, have refused to adhere to social distancing requirements.

Spring Valley and Monsey — two adjacent communities with large Orthodox Jewish populations — each have more than 1,000 confirmed cases, accounting for more than a third of the county’s entire caseload, according to statistics compiled by the county health department [http://rockland.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/d074e0336e81449393a76d1768ceb096].

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The Challenge of Social Distancing in Hasidic Communities

By Frimet Goldberger

  

My mother is a Hasidic woman with 12 children, close to a hundred grandchildren, and many great-grandchildren.

Passover 2020 will be the first time she will recite the Ma Nishtana — the four questions of the Haggadah, traditionally asked by the youngest child at the table — herself.

She will serve her incomparable chicken soup and egg noodles, fermented borscht with warm potatoes, and falsche fish made of a mixture of ground chicken and turkey only to my father. While the coronavirus sweeps through the world, her dining-room table that seats 12 and extends for 14 or more will host a party of two.

Early on in this pandemic, when I spoke to family members in the Hasidic Kiryas Joel community where she lives — a place I left with my husband and children 11 years ago — I was met with disbelief:

Could this coronavirus really upset our Passover plans?

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Israel Law Requiring Masks Go Into Effect

Last week, Health Ministry Director-General Moshe Bar Siman Tov signed an order requiring Israelis to wear masks outside their homes, beginning on Sunday, April 12, at 7:00a.m.

The masks must cover both the nose and mouth, and must be masks intended for the purpose or homemade in accordance with the Health Ministry guidelines.

It is believed that masks which cover both the nose and mouth reduce transmission of coronavirus.

Those exempt from the order to wear masks include:

- children under age six

- those with mental, emotional, or medical issues which significantly increase the difficulty involved in wearing a mask

- individuals traveling in a private vehicle alone or only with members of their households

- those actively participating in media broadcasts

- two employees who consistently sit in the same room, as long as there are at least two meters of space between them

The Health Ministry called on the public to continue remaining at home, and to continue working together to stop the spread of coronavirus.

Currently, it is permitted to leave home for one of the following reasons:

- work, for those who are permitted to do so under the guidelines

- purchasing food, medicine, or other essential products or services

- helping someone who requires help due to need or a medical situation

- transferring a child between the homes of his divorced parents

- walking within 100 meters of home

Gatherings of more than two people are forbidden, and proper hygiene practices must be followed, and a two-meter distance must be kept between people.

"The danger of coronavirus has not yet passed," the Ministry said in a statement. "Only if we all strictly adhere to the guidelines, will we be able to prepare for a gradual lifting of the lockdown."

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Chareidie New York Covid-19 Dead Were Buried on Second Day of Yom Tov

More than thirty people who belong to the large Charedi community in New York passed away during the first day of Passover, according to Behadrei Haredim.

According to the report, under the guidance of the rabbis, and in order not to harm the dignity of the deceased, some of the funerals were carried out as early as Friday, on which Diaspora communities held the second day of Yom Tov.

Members of the Chevra Kadisha performed the funerals around the clock, some without the presence of deceased families, due to the unique situation created and to avoid having to bury the deceased in mass graves.

The deceased lived in almost all of the major Charedi areas in and around New York, including Boro Park, Williamsburg and Crown Heights, as well as in Monsey and Lakewood, New Jersey.

It should be noted that according to halakha, funeral services are permitted on chag, but in recent years this permit has been mostly unrealized except in very exceptional cases.

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Reb Yechezkel Klein Dies from Corona Had First Pizza Store In Monsey on Main Street

Before he had the store ... he had a truck that would drive around selling fresh pizza..in Monsey

He was 84 

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Ari Weichbrod 43 Lakewood Hatzalah Member Succumbs to Corona

 Latest Victim of the Virus is R’ Ari Weichbrod z”l of Lakewood, NJ He was 43 years old.

Ari had previously resided in Florida, moving to Lakewood in around 2013. He was a Miami Hatzalah member for a number of years.

About seven years ago, R’ Aron made national news when he helped save the life of two children trapped under a car after being hit by a car. R’ Aron, a paramedic, helped another individual who took a jack out of his car to lift a car that struck a 2-year-old and 8-year-old as they crossed a Lakewood street. R’ Aron was later honored at a Lakewood Township Committee meeting.

Ari was a heroic baal chesed. He served loyally on Hatzolah and on Chaveirim for many years, and was still going out on calls just last week to help anyone in need.

Ari is survived by his wife, Rosie, and their family.

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Stanley Chera z”l, Dies of Coronavirus

Stanley I. Chera z”l, was a prominent member of the Syrian Sephardic community who parlayed his father’s Brooklyn department store business into one of New York real estate’s biggest retail empires, reaped huge rewards from the city’s emergence as a global shopping destination and used his wealth and connections to play kingmaker for Donald Trump.

Stanley died from complications of the coronavirus, making him a  most high-profile industry casualty of the global pandemic.

The Real Deal reports on Chera’s passing:

As the pandemic spread rapidly in New York, Trump had advised Chera to leave the city and decamp to his summer home near Deal, N.J., a popular vacation-home destination for many moguls hailing from Chera’s Syrian Jewish community, which dominates New York retail. Chera took his advice but fell ill anyway, and was admitted to New York Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center in late March. According to a source familiar with events, Chera’s wife, Frieda (Cookie) also contracted the virus, but recovered.

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Beit Shemesh Mother of 9 Passes Away From the Coronavirus She was 53 ..No Preexisting Medical Conditions

DIN NOTE: This lady a"h lived in Beit Shemesh "Bet"..where the extremists live, and who, as I"m typing these words, still believe that this is a Zionist plot, and keep going to shul as usual ..

Police on erev Yom Tov found ALL shuls filled to capacity with people and when they approached the mispallilm yelled "nazi ..nazi"

Mazel Dalel, 53, a Beit Shemesh mother of 9 with no preexisting medical conditions passed away from the coronavirus on Shabbos.

Dalel, a resident of the Kiryah HaChareidit in Beit Shemesh was hospitalized in Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital in Jerusalem after contracting the coronavirus.

The hospital stated that “she was attached to a ventilator and sedated for over a week in serious condition. Her condition quickly deteriorated and she passed away on Shabbos. We share in the sorrow of the family.”

The nifteres left behind her husband R’ Yoel Dalel and nine children.

“It’s an unfathomable tragedy,” one of Dalel’s neighbors told Kikar H’Shabbos. “She left behind nine young orphans and her husband, one of the chashuve avreichim in the city, Rav Yoel.

“There’s no one who doesn’t know this wonderful family, who has lived in Kiryah Hachareidit since it was founded. She worked in the Magen Halev school as an assistant in the morning and as a pre-school teacher in the afterschool program, where she devotedly took care of special needs children.”

ZAKA and Ezras Achim Beit Shemesh took care of the arrangements for the levaya  and the organizations are also tending to the needs of the family at this difficult time.

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Will the virus upend Chareidie society?

Charedi society has been struck uniquely hard by the coronavirus pandemic. Estimates at some Israeli hospitals say over half the coronavirus patients are Haredi, even though the group makes up scarcely a tenth of Israel’s population.

While clear figures for the virus’s spread are hard to come by, there’s no doubt of the pandemic’s enormous psychological toll on the community. Beloved rabbis have already succumbed, and stories of children mourning their parents at funerals in Brooklyn were shared far and wide on Haredi websites and WhatsApp groups over the past three weeks. It’s hard not to sympathize with the community as it faces quarantine, isolation and the looming specter of widespread illness.

But it is also hard not to sympathize with that society’s critics over the past few weeks.

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Tosher Chassidim Demonstrate After Tosh in Montreal is ordered to Lockdown

Some 200 residents of a Hasidic community near Montreal left their homes to demonstrate after a delivery driver was prevented from entering their locked down community.

Boisbriand, a Hasidic enclave of 4,000 just north of Montreal, was ordered into a 14-day lockdown on March 29 after a coronavirus outbreak. 

Police have been controlling the entrance to and exit from the neighborhood.

On Monday night police prevented a delivery driver from entering the community because his service did not appear on the list of essential services provided to the community, the Montreal Gazette reported. It did not say what he was delivering.

The demonstrators left their homes to converge on the police checkpoint. Police spoke to local leaders to defuse the situation, according to the report.

The community is home to the Tosh sect. Last month, Tosh leaders asked Quebec authorities to help them stop the spread of disease in their community. News reports suggested at the time that the virus might have been brought to the community by members who traveled to New York for the Purim holiday.

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