The city of Modiin Illit is currently a “red city” – with the highest infection rate in relation to its population of Jewish cities in Israel.
In light of the above, the Modiin Illit municipality carried out a unique initiative on Thursday requiring all Talmudei Torah children to be tested for the coronavirus before the beginning of the school year in an effort to stem the infection rate.
The Rav of Modiin Illit, HaRav Meir Kessler, sent a letter to the principals of all the Talmudei Torah in the city last week, requesting that they refrain from opening their Talmudei Torah until the testing program is carried out and the results are received.
The initiative is just one of the municipality’s recent efforts to decrease the infection rate in the city, which seem to have been successful – the infection rate has already dropped dramatically from 25-28% to 9%. However, the number of coronavirus carriers in the city is still higher than average.
Yeshivah bochurim in the city were also tested for the coronavirus before entering their respective yeshivas, as part of the program for all Yeshivas Gedolos in Israel arranged by the Vaad Hayeshivos.
(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
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4 Responses
rabbis don’t buy into this nonsense
Modiin Ilit was downgraded to orange today.
Sorry to say The testing was CANCELED. This article was not up to date at the time of posting. It was found that to test all the kids in the Talmud Torah would take weeks. So the schools have started without testing. The problem here in Modiin Ilite is the amount of people especially yeshiva ketanos, girls the same age and Avreichim and even many wives who either do not wear masks or do so on their chins. Also all Peleg shuls do not follow rules and don’t wear masks at all. Not only here but all over. People do not care of health hazards they are causing, do not care of the chill Hashem caused and don’t seem to understand that if the city stays red, bus service will be cut and business people will have to close their stores and lose their parnasah! The Rabanim are 2 steps behind!
All Modiin Illit boys schools grades 7-8 and some grade 6 were tested on Friday. Out of the thousands of tests, there were 15 positive carriers found.