We are all learning what it means to live in communities in which we need to exercise social distancing and enhance our typical personal hygiene regimen to safeguard against the Coronavirus (Covid-19). Hillel Day School, the Jewish elementary and middle school I attended in the 1980s and the school two of my children currently attend (they will graduate in June), has suspended classes amid the positive Covid-19 test of a member of the faculty. In the Jewish community, the closing of synagogues has raised halakhic (Jewish legal) questions about how to constitute a minyan (quorum of ten individuals) so that those in mourning and observing a yahrzeit can recite the Mourner's Kaddish.
Thankfully, I just concluded my year of saying Kaddish for my beloved father, Gary D. Miller of blessed memory, so I don't have a personal need to recite Kaddish right now. This week, however, I have been asked by many people about the ability to have a "virtual minyan" (using video streaming services) because I have written on the subject in the past and helped my Talmud teacher, Rabbi Avram Israel Reisner, do research on the issue when he was drafting his teshuvah (rabbinic responsum) on the Virtual Minyan in 1998 and 1999. I think that if there has ever been a time when it is acceptable to offer virtual minyanim, that time is now. The technology has advanced so much since Rabbi Reisner first began to look into the matter back in the late 1990s so that many of his initial concerns about lagging video feeds and buffering internet connections are no longer concerns. Further, with so many synagogues shuttered until at least after Passover and people being self-quarantined, it will bring much comfort to so many in the community.
I learned so much from Rabbi Reisner in my first year of rabbinical school and his interest in the halakhic feasibility of the Virtual Minyan on the Internet helped me to begin my own quest to look deeper into the intersection of Technology and Jewish law. Another teacher who taught me so much that first year of rabbinical school at the Jewish Theological Seminary was Rabbi Robbie Harris. Rabbi Harris has written an important piece on how the Jewish community should proceed during this time when we're dealing with the implications of the Coronavirus (Covid-19). I think it's worthwhile to share his thoughts in their entirety below:
Pikuach Nefesh, Social Distancing and a Rabbi’s Case for the Need to Protect Life
Rabbi Robert Harris
A caveat before I begin: I have hesitated from responding to the Coronavirus since news of it first broke, since I am neither a scientist nor a public health official, but now… as a rabbi, a faculty member of the Jewish Theological Seminary and as a former member both of the Rabbinical Assembly’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards and of the Israel Rabbinical Assembly Law Committee, I want to say clearly and unequivocally: we must take drastic action to enforce social distancing, in the absence of clear governmental directives. Now is not the time to debate, for example, the fine points of use of electricity on Shabbat, or other, now trivial, matters that typically divide us one from another; we are talking about pikuach nefesh, the saving of human life.
I share these sentiments — not quite a teshuvah, for there is no time to calmly research one, but more than just an op-ed — with a great amount of respect for the various ways in which people of all faiths are struggling to respond to the virus and its implications for our individual, family and communal lives. But at the same time, I want to shout from the rooftops: rabbis and clergy people of all faith: E-services, everyone!!! Social distancing! Virtual congregations! All public religious worship should be set aside until the crisis passes. If the NBA is canceling basketball games, out of its concern for the sanctity of human life, then how much the more so should we follow suit for the purpose of gathering in worship.
For those of you unfamiliar with the rabbinic principle of pikuach nefesh, let me describe it in the most general of terms: the Torah states (in a context that has little meaning for the subsequent talmudic discussion or my purposes here): “you shall keep My laws and My rules, by the pursuit of which humankind shall live: I am the LORD (Leviticus 18:5). A midrash, or rabbinic interpretation, teaches: “to live by them — and not die by them!” (Babylonian Talmud, Treatise Yoma 85b). The Sages considered many applications of the principle they found in verses like these; I will share just one of them here. It is from the same section in the Babylonian Talmud, Yoma 84b:
Thankfully, I just concluded my year of saying Kaddish for my beloved father, Gary D. Miller of blessed memory, so I don't have a personal need to recite Kaddish right now. This week, however, I have been asked by many people about the ability to have a "virtual minyan" (using video streaming services) because I have written on the subject in the past and helped my Talmud teacher, Rabbi Avram Israel Reisner, do research on the issue when he was drafting his teshuvah (rabbinic responsum) on the Virtual Minyan in 1998 and 1999. I think that if there has ever been a time when it is acceptable to offer virtual minyanim, that time is now. The technology has advanced so much since Rabbi Reisner first began to look into the matter back in the late 1990s so that many of his initial concerns about lagging video feeds and buffering internet connections are no longer concerns. Further, with so many synagogues shuttered until at least after Passover and people being self-quarantined, it will bring much comfort to so many in the community.
I learned so much from Rabbi Reisner in my first year of rabbinical school and his interest in the halakhic feasibility of the Virtual Minyan on the Internet helped me to begin my own quest to look deeper into the intersection of Technology and Jewish law. Another teacher who taught me so much that first year of rabbinical school at the Jewish Theological Seminary was Rabbi Robbie Harris. Rabbi Harris has written an important piece on how the Jewish community should proceed during this time when we're dealing with the implications of the Coronavirus (Covid-19). I think it's worthwhile to share his thoughts in their entirety below:
Pikuach Nefesh, Social Distancing and a Rabbi’s Case for the Need to Protect Life
Rabbi Robert Harris
A caveat before I begin: I have hesitated from responding to the Coronavirus since news of it first broke, since I am neither a scientist nor a public health official, but now… as a rabbi, a faculty member of the Jewish Theological Seminary and as a former member both of the Rabbinical Assembly’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards and of the Israel Rabbinical Assembly Law Committee, I want to say clearly and unequivocally: we must take drastic action to enforce social distancing, in the absence of clear governmental directives. Now is not the time to debate, for example, the fine points of use of electricity on Shabbat, or other, now trivial, matters that typically divide us one from another; we are talking about pikuach nefesh, the saving of human life.
I share these sentiments — not quite a teshuvah, for there is no time to calmly research one, but more than just an op-ed — with a great amount of respect for the various ways in which people of all faiths are struggling to respond to the virus and its implications for our individual, family and communal lives. But at the same time, I want to shout from the rooftops: rabbis and clergy people of all faith: E-services, everyone!!! Social distancing! Virtual congregations! All public religious worship should be set aside until the crisis passes. If the NBA is canceling basketball games, out of its concern for the sanctity of human life, then how much the more so should we follow suit for the purpose of gathering in worship.
For those of you unfamiliar with the rabbinic principle of pikuach nefesh, let me describe it in the most general of terms: the Torah states (in a context that has little meaning for the subsequent talmudic discussion or my purposes here): “you shall keep My laws and My rules, by the pursuit of which humankind shall live: I am the LORD (Leviticus 18:5). A midrash, or rabbinic interpretation, teaches: “to live by them — and not die by them!” (Babylonian Talmud, Treatise Yoma 85b). The Sages considered many applications of the principle they found in verses like these; I will share just one of them here. It is from the same section in the Babylonian Talmud, Yoma 84b: