Israel’s Holiday Closure: Not the Ideal Time to be Held Up as a Bad Example (AUDIO INTERVIEW)

The Media Line speaks with Prof. Nadav Davidovitch about some of the reasons behind a quite dubious distinction

Israel, as you might have heard by now, is the first country to enter a second nationwide lockdown aimed at stemming yet another rising tide of fresh coronavirus cases as well as spikes in both morbidity and death rates.

Making matters worse, this dubious honor coincides with the beginning of the High Holy Day season. This means that at a time of festive family meals and religious and non-religious Jews alike congregating together in large numbers inside and outside synagogues to hear the traditional blowing of the shofar, or ram’s horn, most people will be hunkering down at home in small numbers and even alone.

After being touted as a model country for the way it handled the initial outbreak of the pandemic, Israel is now being held up as an example of how not to do it. Ask around and you’ll hear that it’s doubly frustrating to be portrayed as a bad example exactly when you’d rather be celebrating to the high heavens.

For some insight into what happened, The Media Line turned to Prof. Nadav Davidovitch, director of the School of Public Health at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and an adviser to the Israeli government’s coronavirus task force.