Glatt reminds: Masks will keep shuls open

Rabbi Dr. Aaron Glatt coupled hope with a dire warning on motzei Shabbat: COVID-19 cases are up worldwide while, “B”H, in the Five Towns and surrounding Jewish communities in Nassau County, the numbers have gone down.”

The best way to avoid becoming a hot spot again — with the attendant shutdown of shuls, schools and businesses — is “masking and social distancing and appropriate handwashing,” he said. “If we do not mask and distance, especially when we are indoors with people not in our bubble, it is a disaster waiting to happen.”

Dr. Glatt, chief of infectious diseases and hospital epidemiologist at Mount Sinai South Nassau and assistant rabbi at the Young Israel of Woodmere, addressed the community on Zoom.

“Think back what it was like around Pesach. And if you want to go back to that, then don’t listen to anything I’m saying,” he cautioned.

He acknowledged that masks are uncomfortable, pointing out that he leyned that morning with a mask on — but “you do it because you have to; we’re doing mask wearing to help other people.”

“The arguement that masks are dangerous or harmful is absolutely false,” he added.

People who say “mask wearing is no good and lab testing is no good, that these are all government plots — those people are ignorant. Those people are making a terrible mistake — they’re going to cause people to die.

“The purpose of testing is not to close yeshivas, it’s to stop spread so we can stop people in our community from dying. I don’t understand how anybody could possibly say anything else.”

Meanwhile, anyone with symptoms “must stay home — don’t go to shul, don’t go to shiurim, don’t go to work,” he said.