1. Can’t wait for the peanut gallery of keyboard cowboys to weigh in about what they think the Rabbonim should have really said.

   Memo: There might be a reason people are interested in what these Rabbonim say and follow their guidance and nobody is calling you all day asking what to do. It might make you wonder whether you should consider that they might be better at this than you are.

   • Way to go, Yankel. Insult people for having an opinion. Your Ahavas Yisroel is outstanding.

     NOT!

2. According to Senator Singers office this is not a mandate from the Governor.
   And Lakewoods numbers are now in line or lower than most of New Jersey.
   there is no reason to be testing healthy children to see if they contain a scant amount of a virus in them which is probably not even contagious and forces an entire family and them into quarantine.

3. There will come a time one day Beh that this will all be over and we can place all these letters in a museum of some sort to tell our grandchildren Beh

4. I don’t think someone who is not sick should be tested.. and if someone is mildly ill and doesn’t need medical treatment, he should self quarantine and not be tested either. It is better not to become part of the statistics.

5. Just to clarify, (not getting into the politics)
   This is the position of the Rabonim (whom I respect)

   However there is no law or executive order at this time requiring testing in schools,

   this is a pre-emptive operation to avoid closures.

   • This most certainly is a pre-emptive exercise to avoid closures.

     But, in my opinion, this is nothing but gaming the system.

     The real way to avoid closures, which no one seems to want to do, is to have our talmidim and rebbeim masked and distanced and to implement some sort of capsule program.

     For some reason, no one in a position of leadership wants to champion this.

     Is it not “yeshivish”, “heimish”? Does it appear that we respect the authorities too much?

     What is the reason?

     Frankly, it is an embarrassment to our communities if not an outright chillul HaShem that we don’t take this seriously.

     • It sounds like you are hiding in a bunker for a few months.
       I see many people wearing masks. I see a lot of social distancing.
       I call that a Kiddush Hashem.

       • Not sure where you are.

         While I don’t live in Lakewood, I have family there and I hear what’s going on.

         I haven’t heard of any yeshivos gedolos that are following guidelines.

         People in shops with no masks, masks under their chin, masks hanging from their necks.

         I was in Lakewood overnight in August and asked a friend if there was a minyan that masked. He didn’t know of any, so I had to daven b’yichidus.

         Perhaps you are trying to tell me during this so-called 2nd wave more people are now masking. I say “so-called” because this really is still the same wave. It’s not as if the virus disappeared. It was alive and well in other parts of the country/world. All it took is for enough infected people to visit here from elsewhere or for people’s short-lived immunity to expire for things to reawaken.

         So people ignored the CDC’s recommendations for months and now we are suffering from a significant uptick because we ignored the problem. And the national press is all over this story. I don’t call that a kiddush HaShem.

     • Why in the world would it not be “yeshivish” to wear a mask? Yeshivish means you keep all the halachos of the shulchan arech to the highest extent. Taking care of your health is a halacha. People who don’t wear masks may claim they are “yeshivish” but let’s call a spade a spade. They are just afraid of being “nerdy”, nothing to do with how Yeshivish you are. Some people have just put beauty before health. But this is sheker hachain vehevel hayofi, the opposite of yeshivish. I know many yeshivish people who wear masks, mostly more confindent people who don’t care if they are perceived as nerdy. They’d rather do the right thing.

6. please allow tests done recently in other labs. its hard to get the nose swab in my kids

   • Nose swabs return many FALSE positive results.

     Best to not test at all but if you much, do the spit/saliva test. It is much more accurate.

7. When I hear it from the Roshei Yeshiva myself (I dont mean the Rabbanim on the letter since many rabbanim who are being silenced disagree) that’s when I;ll beleive it. My family has never tested as the tests are flawed and I won’t do this to my children. If you’d like to have them swabbed up their nose again and again you are welcome to. There are other ways to keep yeshivos open.

   • So you expect the roshei hayeshiva to call every single person individually to tell them this, because you don’t believe these rabanim?
     Since when did Rabbi Forchheimer, or Rabbi Shachar, etc., ever lie to anyone about anything?
     Besides, these rabonim were appointed by the roshei hayeshuva to be the igud harabonim for this very issue!
     The roshei yeshiva themselves said to us: trust these people on this issue!

8. The attitude of some of the commenters here indicates that many people are missing the point of the establishing of the Igud Harabanim.

   Let us think for a moment: What was the reason for establishing an Ichud? Why can’t each rav in his shul decide what is the appropriate approach to take?

   The point was, that since this issue is one that we all are concerned about, and the measures we take in response to it must be done as a community in tandem, and not as individuals, we need to have one central body that takes all the relevant up-to-date information, and issues directives across the board for all to follow.

   Therefore, whether you are obligated to listen to this rabanim, or whether you’re smarter than these rabanim or not, is irrelevant.

   Thefact remains that they are the ones who the community will listen to, so the only way for anyone to participate in the community’s response to this issue is to follow what they say. The more you contradict or question what they say, the more you chip away at the one and only consensus that we have as a community, without replacing that consensus with another one.

   What’s smart about that?

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