Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on March 12, 2020

[Update: On Monday, several suburban schools and private universities announced closings.]

NEW ROCHELLE, N.Y. There will be no merrymaking, no buzzing noisemakers and no toddlers dressed up as biblical kings and queens: Purim, the joyous Jewish festival that begins on Monday evening, has been canceled for the congregants of Young Israel of New Rochelle.

Their rabbi has the coronavirus. Their temple was locked last week on the order of the Westchester County health commissioner. And more than 100 families are self-quarantined after one congregant, Lawrence Garbuz, 50, a lawyer from New Rochelle, contracted the virus.

Fear of the spread of the coronavirus 82 people have been infected in Westchester County, including Mr. Garbuzs family and neighbors has upended Purim plans far beyond this small city five miles north of New York Citys borders. The tight-knit nature of the Jewish community, a point of pride, now has a downside: In a world where so many people are interconnected, the risk of transmission rises sharply.

And, as the numbers of the infected climbed over the weekend, Jewish communities that are swept up in an international epidemic considered how to prevent religious life, and Purim, from becoming an incubator of illness.

Some New York synagogues are pre-slicing the challah bread, which is typically torn, to minimize touching. Others have done away with the kiddush cup, a communal goblet of sacramental wine. Rather than bringing Purim baskets of triangular hamantaschen cookies to neighbors, one Westchester synagogue will now only leave the traditional packages on doorsteps.

At more than one synagogue, congregants received an email this week asking them to no longer kiss the Torah scroll in reverence.

There is a need for community for prayer to exist, that is how we thrive and pray as a Jewish people, said Amanda C. Greenawalt, a director at Bnai Jeshurun, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, which, like the Fifth Avenue Synagogue on the Upper East Side, has canceled its Purim carnival.

At Bnai Jeshurun, the decision followed discussions with the rabbi, which led to the conclusion that there was no way to keep the bouncy castle sanitized. We have to be together as a community, to live our lives every day, Ms. Greenawalt said. But this is challenging us not to do so.

Twenty miles south of New Rochelle, on the Upper West Side, the Romemu synagogue announced that it had canceled Purim at least as an in-person celebration. It will instead be broadcast online and via Facebook Live.

Members of the congregation had interacted in recent days with people affiliated with Yeshiva University in Manhattan and SAR Academy in the Bronx, which were both closed last week over coronavirus concerns linked to Mr. Garbuzs children, who attend the schools, said Jeffrey Cahn, Romemus executive director.

Rather than waiting two, three or four weeks, we would rather be careful now, Mr. Cahn said.

Just before evening prayers on Friday, congregants at Bet Am Shalom, a Reconstructionist synagogue in White Plains, were notified that Sabbath, and later Purim services including the synagogues beloved annual play, or spiel would not go forward. The congregation would pray via audio livestream instead. (White Plains is 10 miles northwest of New Rochelle, where a doctor was confirmed to have the virus on Friday.)

Jewish tradition says that we must do what is required to preserve life and health, an email from the temple said.

Even in places where Purim is still on, precautions have imposed a new reality on ancient traditions: At Town & Village Synagogue in the East Village, Rabbi Larry Sebert has instructed congregants not to cover their eyes with their hands, as is customary during the sacred Shema prayer, to avoid transmitting pathogens.

To create the new protocols, temples have turned to a body of rabbinical guidance that has been issued since the outbreak began. The Committee on Jewish Law and Standards of the Rabbinical Assembly, which guides the conservative movement, said that some teleconferencing for prayers was permissible for sick people.

The Orthodox Union, which governs Orthodox Jews, reminded followers it was acceptable to miss even the holiest prayers if a person has the coronavirus.

In her most recent Sabbath sermon, Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum of Congregation Beit Simchat Torah in Manhattan gave a demonstration of new ways to wish one another Shabbat shalom, with elbow bumps instead of hugs, and had congregants practice the gesture.

We have a strong tradition of never canceling services, said Rabbi Kleinbaum, who added that the congregations 1980s-themed Purim party would still be held: People need to be with each other; the isolation is terrifying.

There are bright spots: Young Israel of Scarsdale will hold an al fresco Purim service, on doctors advice that the open air will minimize chances of transmission. But the rabbis 11-year-old son will not be there: He is quarantined at home, after Westchester Day School in Mamaroneck was closed after potential exposure.

After services, his father, Rabbi Jonathan Morgenstern, will throw him a private Purim, so he can still wear his storm trooper costume, the rabbi said.

And on Purim night in New Rochelle, even though many families are sequestered in their houses as is Reuven Fink, the rabbi of Young Israel, as he recovers from the coronavirus they will still hear the traditional oration of the Purim story, or Megillah.

Rabbinical students are planning to rove the neighborhood, chanting the ancient text through the windows of quarantined familys homes standing, of course, at a doctor-approved minimum of 15 feet away.

They are being responsible and sitting home, so they dont endanger others, Rochel Butman, the director of Chabad of Westchester, a Hasidic Jewish outreach group, said of her quarantined neighbors. She organized the wandering minstrel-style reading (and consulted with doctors about its advisability), which will be performed by students from Yeshiva Mesivta Menachem, in nearby Hastings-on-Hudson.

Over 70 quarantined families have signed up so far, she said.

Nobody is forgetting about them, going on with their life, buying Purim baskets and going on without thinking of them, Ms. Butman said.

Liam Stack contributed reporting.

Read more from the original source:

Purim Festivities Were Set, Costumes and All. Then Coronavirus Struck - The New York Times

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