Rabbinic directives for social distancing and curtailing prayer gatherings and other religious social meetings are not new. Indeed, dealing with contagious disease has been a Jewish preoccupation since ancient times.
Now more than ever, we need global cooperation to counter the continued threat of the pandemic. But the response to this crisis helps us distinguish between the pariah states of this world and countries that seek peaceful coexistence.
On International Holocaust Remembrance Day, we remember the loss of 6 million Jews and the more than 27,000 non-Jews, known as the Righteous Among the Nations, who risked their lives to save Jews from the Nazis and their collaborators.
On January 23, we stood together with united resolve in the face of history’s greatest horror, the Holocaust, at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp where more than 1 million Jews perished. Never Again. Not for Jews. Not for Muslims. Not for any of God’s children.