Life

In the Age of Swine Flu, Please Refrain From Kissing the Torah

By Gabrielle Birkner September 11, 2009

Here’s a High Holy Day dilemma for the H1N1 era: You think you might have the swine flu, but you don’t want to miss your Rosh Hashanah aliyah. What to do?

Forget about kissing the Torah or the ark covers, according to Israel’s health ministry. In an attempt to stem the spread of the sometimes Tamiflu-resistant swine flu, the ministry Thursday released a set of High Holy Day recommendations.

Haaretz reports: “The directives urge avoiding direct lip contact with public holy items, maintaining personal hygiene and sneezing and coughing into a tissue or a bent elbow, not into the palm.”

May we also suggest that coughing-sneezing-aching worshippers hold the yad with a tissue? Bring their own tallit? Or, better yet, stay home and rest?

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

The coming year promises to be filled with more complex and historic developments. We are entering an era where independent, fact-based Jewish journalism will be more important than ever. We need to be ready for whatever 2025 will bring, and with your help, we can be.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO