COVID-19 and Rosh Hashanah
The latest challenge in Jewish history
Plagues, pogroms, wars, the Inquisition, the Holocaust: For centuries, Jews have endured obstacles to celebrating the High Holy Days.
Now they must work through a new hindrance: COVID-19.
Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year and one of Judaism’s most hallowed days, begins on Friday night. Jewish leaders will see whether months of frantic pandemic planning succeeded in creating meaningful worship during this sacred time of year, when Jews typically gather by the hundreds to repent for sins and ask God for forgiveness.
“Sadly, we are not the first generation of Jews forced to be inventive and daring in order to outsmart an unexpected enemy,” the leaders of B’nai Aviv, a Conservative synagogue in Weston, wrote to the congregation recently. “Our ability to adapt to adverse circumstances, while holding on to what is most important, accounts for our enduring vitality as a people. This situation will continue to test our community’s resilience, a test thatwe are confident we can pass
together.”
Synagogue leaders have been agonizing for months about whether to assemble this weekend. Some will proceed with small, socially distanced gatherings, while others will conduct digital services, deciding even limited in-person worship is unsafe.
Orthodox synagogues, which do not use electricity on holy days, will conduct in-person services with an assortment of restrictions. Conservative and Reform congregations are mostly organizing online ceremonies, with a few exceptions for socially distanced gatherings with just a few dozen people inside.
The decision process has been particularly grueling for synagogue leaders who have watched congregants and family members contract the virus.
“I am suffering from decision fatigue. I haven’t taken one day off,” said Rabbi Efrem Goldberg of Boca Raton Synagogue, an Orthodox congregation. “Every day, the leadership has to make policy decisions. Should we open the bathrooms? Should prayer books be available?”
For the holidays, the synagogue will offer12 services in rooms throughout the campus instead of gathering hundreds of people in its cavernous sanctuary. Everyone has to wear masks. Congregants can choose among ceremonies that last one, two or three hours, depending on their tolerance for indoor assemblies.
Goldberg said there also will be 14 outdoor gatherings to blow the shofar, the ear-splitting ram’s horn that heralds the new year. Several synagogues, including Chabad Orthodox congregations, are traveling to nearby neighborhoods to allow Jews not visiting a synagogue to participate in the moving ceremony, performed since biblical times to alert communities to important events.
“This year was a little more complicated than most,” said Rabbi Arele Gopin of Chabad of Central Boca. “People are still very uncomfortable.”
He said Chabad’s sanctuary can hold 900 people, but only about 20% of the congregation expressed interest in in-person services.
Safety protocols will include mask-wearing, sitting only in marked seats, one person in the bathroom at a time and senior citizens discouraged from attending.
George Temel of Parkland plans to attend an indoor service at Ramat Shalom Synagogue in Plantation with his mother, Hanna, a 90-year-old Holocaust survivor who recovered from COVID-19 in July.
“I can’t do Zoom anymore. I do Zoom all day for work,” said Temel, 58. “I feel what Ramat is doing is safer than many other places. My mother already had COVID so my fear for her is gone.”
The hordes that have participated in High Holy Day services in past years proved a captive audience for synagogues in desperate need of a financial boost. Many congregations charge non-members for High HolyDay tickets, which can cost $100 or more. Emotional appeals about the synagogues’ need for money became a mainstay of many services.
But now that fewer will be in live attendance, congregations have had to brainstorm howto preserve an essential source of funding.
“We still have to maintain our buildings even if we can’t use them in the same way right now,” leaders of B’nai Aviv in Weston wrote to congregants. “We encourage you to understand your dues and donations as an investment in a community institution, rather than a transactional, fee-for service payment.”
B’ nai Aviv came up with a creative way to raise money during COVID-19: “Synagogue Stand-Ins.” Congregants will take selfies, wearing their High Holy Day finest, and send them to the synagogue.
For a $54 donation, organizers will enlarge the photos into 2 foot by 3 foot portraits and place them in seats in the sanctuary as clergy conduct Zoom services from the stage.
Temple Beth El, a Reform temple in Boca Raton, is also conducting its services on Zoom, and that’s fine with member Tracey Labgold, although she still feels sad to miss the sense of community she looks forward to each fall.
“When you pulled up to the synagogue, you would see so many people walking in together. It was such a good feeling,” Labgold recalled. “That’s not going to happen this year. I’ve done a few Zoom services with the temple and it’s not the same.”
Labgold, 44, and her wife and their five children have been debating whether they should dress up for the athome Zoom service as they would have if theywere going in-person.
“The majority did not want to dress,” Labgold reported.
What to do with the children became an issue at several congregations. At Boca Raton Synagogue, babysitting will not be offered this year, preventing some parents from joining a live service.
Shani Muschel, a Boca Raton congregant, said she will have to stay home with her 1-year- old and 4-year-old as her older children, 8 and 12, attend services with her husband.
Muschel, 35, said her family has had to abandon so many cherished traditions this year, including meals with large groups of friends and holiday visits to family in New York.
“It ’s isolating when you’re in the house, and when you’re at the synagogue, you’re not supposed to socialize and forbidden to stay too long,” she said. “You don’t get that sense of being part of a vibrant community. It’s like we’re losing an extension of ourselves. It’s been very lonely.”