Dear Friends:
"Sometimes,
When I Come Back From a Coronavirus Call, I Feel Like Going Into One of
the House Minyanim With a Baseball Bat.” (The verbatim words of a kind,
supreme mentch who has been serving our community in Hatzolah for over
30 years)
Hatzalah
is one of the Crown Jewels of Jewish communal life. And the Coronavirus
is placing an enormous stress on the heroic volunteers, their family
members, and indeed the organization itself.
Since
I started writing about the danger and evil of “House Minyanim,” over a
dozen Hatzalah members contacted me. Every single one thanked me for
speaking out, and most said that I was TOO SOFT in my writings.
The
Hatzalah member quoted above, told me that people who are doing house
minyanim are “shofchei damim/murderers” and, “It honestly makes me feel
like it’s “Pinchas time,” (who killed someone committing a cardinal
sin).
I certainly don’t fault this holy person from expressing himself like that. We are to blame that he feels like that.
My
dear friends, if we do not step forward, start speaking up in person,
start yelling at the shofchei damim who are endangering the tzadikim of
Hatzalah and all of us, start telling the institutions who are winking
at this behavior or worse that we will never support them financially
for the rest of our lives, start reporting gatherings to the police, we
just might call Hatzolah when we need it in the days and weeks to come,
and find out that they don’t have enough healthy members who are willing
and able to go on these calls.
Be well and Gut Shabbos/Shabbat Shalom
Yakov
P.S. After I posted these lines
above on my social media this morning, a friend sent me the letter below
from Hatzolah of Union City, NJ, notifying that they are temporarily
suspending operations. Full Disclosure: I did not get the chance to
verify the letter myself, which I usually do, but I got it from a very
responsible person who said it was legitimate.
