Emerging from isolation
Regarding “Owners, workers protest government in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv” (April 27), one can understand the “back to work” demands and malaise of small business owners, wherein one interviewee deplored his lack of business because “people are being depressed again.”
However, a business may be restored or a new one found, but a human life is lost forever. In a week, I paid online shiva calls to one friend who lost a daughter, another who lost her husband, one who lost her mother – all to corona virus. I am checking daily on a relative in the ICU plus two friends who are slowly recovering from the virus.
While this pandemic is still on the upswing, I think a better focus than small business owners would be on the nurses, doctors and essential workers who put their safety on the line every day in order to help others
MARION REISS Beit Shemesh
Regarding “Could the Bible’s prohibition on eating bats have prevented coronavirus?” (April 26), I find it hard to understand the value of wondering whether the coronavirus pandemic may have been avoided if all humans kept kosher. Since kashrut is commanded only for Jews, pondering this point has no value.
If you wish to wonder what human iniquity led to this worldwide disaster, it might be more beneficial to consider transgression of the Noahide Laws, which apply to all mankind, but I’ll leave that to others.
What really prompted me to respond to Shmuley Boteach’s article was the story of Michael Jackson, who was moved to donate $100 to fatten up a skinny cat in an impoverished village. The fact that the woman ate the cat after it was fattened was not only reasonable (since she was presumably malnourished) but she was actually giving Jackson the benefit of the doubt that he would not donate this money to a cat while ignoring the numerous human inhabitants of the village whose welfare surely merited more attention than a cat.
Perhaps he did donate money to the human inhabitants, but in that case upon hearing of the cat’s fate, he should have concluded that he didn’t help them sufficiently and his remorse ought to have been for that.
SHARON LINDENBAUM Rehovot