Right After Rosh Hashanah I got a call from a husband and wife and they were both on the phone. They asked me to write from both of their perspectives.
Dear Mrs. Bluth,
I came here to spend the Yomim Tovim with my family who live in Boro Park. I counted myself very lucky to leave Eretz Yisroel on one of the last planes out, because the coronavirus was ramping back up in Yerushalayim. So, when I got the green light to go, I quickly had my wife pack up the kids and we came to the States just as talk of a lock-down for many cities in Israel was being implemented. My feeling of well-being was short lived when I saw not even one person in Boro Park wearing a mask and/or gloves, which we in Israel wear everywhere. I was horrified to see large groups of people, women with children, clustered together on street corners and in shops without social distancing as if nothing was going on, no sickness, no deaths. Shuls filled to capacity on Shabbos with no masks in a closed environment, and when I asked how this is allowed, I am told there is no more virus!
I am terrified to step away from the house or let my kids visit with their cousins who they have not seen in three years, and everyone makes fun of me and says that there is no reason to fear, that what people have said was exaggerated and said to make us afraid. But people are still getting sick and dying from Covid-19 I try to explain. I have seen it in Israel, as I am an emergency room nurse in a Tel Aviv hospital. But no one listens to me here. I tell my parents that I came here so that I could be safe but I feel even more threatened here then at home. I fear for my parents who are older, my father suffers from hypertension and other ailments and my mother is a cancer survivor, but when I ask them not to go out or let others into their home, they say it is safe, that they have no more coronavirus in Boro Park! Me, my husband and children are the only ones wearing masks and gloves when we do go out.
Just when I thought that everyone else was right and I was wrong, that somehow their neighborhood was clean of Corona, we had three deaths of people that we know and others had to be taken to the hospital! Still no one seemed alarmed, believing that those people died ‘because it was their time.’ Then, just last week, my sister had to be rushed to the hospital because she couldn’t breath and was put on a ventilator. Sadly, she passed away two days later and I sit here while sitting shiva for her, in a room filled with people who came to be menachem avel and still not wearing masks or observing mandatory distancing!
How do you make these people understand that the virus is running rampant and it is too late to take precautions once the symptoms become evident. I want to pack up and go back home. It is far safer there then here. We are not in denial in Eretz Yisroel. We know that this virus is far from over and that the only way to control the spread is to protect oneself from it is to mask up, wear gloves, and wash your hands often.
Please send this message to your readership, maybe you can be a shaliach through your column so that some lives can be saved and those ignorant of the still-present danger will be warned that it is still out there and very much alive. My sister is gone, I cannot get her back, so please use my words to warn others that they are feeding the virus by not protecting themselves.
Dear Friend,
I am so sorry for your tragic loss and the pain you must be suffering. There is little I can say about those that choose to defy the danger and believe the lies that the virus is over because wearing a mask is uncomfortable or that it, somehow, shows that they do not believe in Hashem over the doctors who insist that this is the strongest shield against the illness.
The coronavirus is not eradicated, it is still very much alive and feeding off those amongst us who are unwilling to abide by the directives of the medical and scientific populace. How many more people must die, needlessly, before these non-believers listen to reason. If not for the love of yourself and your own life, think of reality that you may be infecting your own child, sibling, parent or friend. Then you graduate from being a selfish fool and turn into a murderer! Can you deal with that on your conscience for the rest of your life?
I have attended more virtual funerals in the last eight weeks than I have in the last eighteen years. I jump when my phone ring and am terrified it might be another call informing me that another person I knew is no longer with us. How many more people will die because they took a chance that everyone else is wrong and that they won’t get sick, or equally as bad, making someone else sick because they didn’t abide by masks and gloves and social distancing? It is against the Torah to defy this edict! Hashem has commanded us to do everything and anything necessary to protect our lives so what kind of yid goes against ‘Ushmartem al Nafshosaychem meode!’
We have just come away from Rosh Hashanah, we cried and wailed when we recited the ‘Unesaneh Tokef’ wherein we itemize ‘…..who will live and who will die,’ and the various forms of death, I pray that death by ignorance, will be erased from the threat of this deadly virus and that we, by our own hand will not be instrumental in inflicting it on our brothers and sisters. May HaKodosh Boruch Hu take away this terrible magayfa when He sees to what end His children will go to implement the love and the caring for others through the mitzvah of ‘Ve’ahavta Lerayacha Kamocha.’
To all those who are sitting or who have sat shiva for a loved one, “Hamokom Yenachem Esschem betoch Shaar Avlay Tzion Veyerushalayim.” Amen.
To contact Rachel Bluth: [email protected].