Thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews ignore Covid lockdown rules in Israel for Rabbi funeral

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Thousands of ultra-Orthodox Israelis participated today in the funeral of a prominent rabbi in Jerusalem, flouting the country’s ban on large public gatherings amid the pandemic.

Shocking images showed the funeral procession for Rabbi Meshulam Soloveitchik, who died at age 99 and had recently suffered from Covid-19, wending its way through the streets of Jerusalem in the latest display of ultra-Orthodox Israelis’ refusal to honour coronavirus restrictions.

The phenomenon has undermined the country’s aggressive vaccination campaign to bring a raging outbreak under control and threatened to hurt Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in March elections.

Densely packed throngs of people gathered outside the rabbi’s home in a public rejection of restrictions on outdoor gatherings of more than 10 people. 

Thousands of black-garbed ultra-Orthodox funeral-goers created a sea of black as they coursed past the city’s main entrance toward the cemetery where Soloveitchik was to be buried. 

The vast majority of the ultra-Orthodox Jews were not wearing face masks – and for those who had donned the protective face covering, many were wearing it around their neck or below their nose. 

Police officers blocked intersections to traffic to allow participants to pass, but appeared to take no action to prevent the illegal assembly.

Israeli media said Soloveitchik, a leading religious scholar who headed a number of well-known seminaries, had recently suffered from COVID-19.

Israel’s Health Ministry has recorded over 640,000 confirmed cases of the coronavirus and at least 4,745 deaths since the start of the pandemic. 

At the same time, Israel has vaccinated over 3 million of its citizens – a third of its population and one of the highest rates per capita in the world – in what has become the world’s fastest vaccine rollout. 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched the vaccine operation on December and set protecting Israel’s most vulnerable cohorts as the benchmark for a possible reopening of the economy in February. 

But a projected mid-January turnaround in curbing the spread of the virus did not transpire. Health experts say it will take several weeks for the vaccination campaign to have an effect on infection and hospitalisation rates. 

Despite a third national lockdown, cases and deaths have surged among the part of the population that has not yet been vaccinated. Officials blame this on highly communicable foreign variants of the coronavirus. 

But large public funerals like that for Soloveitchik in Jerusalem, and for a prominent Arab sheikh killed in Jaffa last week, have confounded efforts to prevent the spread of the disease.

A disproportionate number of Israel’s coronavirus cases are within the country’s ultra-Orthodox minority. The strictly religious community, which makes up around 11 per cent of Israel’s 9.2 million people, has accounted for around one-third of the confirmed cases of the virus.

Many ultra-Orthodox sects have kept schools, seminaries and synagogues open, and held mass weddings and funerals in violation of the law. Recent weeks have seen violent clashes between members of the ultra-Orthodox community flouting the rules and police officers trying to enforce them.

Ultra-Orthodox leaders say they have been unfairly singled out and argue the country’s secular public does not understand the importance of public prayers and religious studies in their community.

Gideon Saar, a right-wing Israeli politician challenging Netanyahu in upcoming parliamentary elections, criticized the prime minister on Twitter, saying ‘the pictures from Jerusalem prove that Netanyahu has given up on enforcing the law for political reasons. This won’t happen in a government headed by me. There will be one law for all and it will be enforced.’

Israel’s Cabinet was set to extend the country’s general lockdown for an additional week Sunday evening as the infection rate remained high.

Asked when he now anticipated a turnaround in cases and deaths as a result of the vaccine rollout, Deputy Health Minister Yoav Kisch said: ‘Our goal is to achieve 5.5 million (fully vaccinated citizens) and I reckon that the moment we cross the 3-to-3.5 million (mark) you will already see change.’

‘Everything that the Prime Minister predicted will happen, possibly with a few weeks’ delay,’ he told Kan public radio.

The government imposed the movement restrictions and closure of schools and non-essential businesses last month in an effort to clamp down on Israel’s runaway pandemic.

As of Saturday, 1.7 million Israelis had received the second dose of the Pfizer Inc. vaccine more than a week prior, achieving the maximum 95% protection, the Health Ministry said.

Around another 1.3 million had either received one dose and were awaiting the second or had received the second dose within the last week and so were not yet designated as fully vaccinated.

The conservative Prime Minister Netanyahu is up for reelection on March 23.

He wants to extend the lockdown, which is due to expire on Sunday night, but faces opposition from his coalition partner and political rival, Defence Minister Benny Gantz.

Israel’s inoculation programme does not extend to the approximately 5.2 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where local authorities are organizing their vaccination programme separately.