CTJC Bulletin Rosh Hashanah 2020

The Pandemic in Israel A personal view Stefan C. Reif At the end of February and the beginning of March I was back in Israel, deriving pleasure from the delightful spring weather and the blossoming almond trees, and all was well in my personal little world. I had spent time with my partner Renate in Salzburg, where we had sampled the wonderful wintry scenery, the newly opened spa a few hundred metres from her apartment, and superb local concerts. She had then come to Cambridge where we had enjoyed lunching and dining at St John’s, davening at Thompson’s Lane on Shabbat, working on a joint research project and visiting the superb Tutankhamun exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery in London. I had made all my plans for the coming six months, including lectures in various centres and different countries, had arranged for Renate to join me in Israel for Pesach and had booked seats at the superb Tel Aviv Opera House until the end of the season in July. We booked an early summer holiday at an outstanding hotel in Cyprus. El Al even surprised me by writing to say that because of my many flights my gold card had been upgraded to platinum, and detailing all the advantages. My investments were doing well and I was managing to look after all the needs of my homes in Cambridge and Beit Shemesh by sharing time between them, never leaving either for more than three or four weeks.

Within a few short weeks, our lives, and those of millions of others around the whole globe, had changed dramatically and drastically. Just before Pesach, Prime Minister Netanyahu saw the Covid-19 catastrophe looming and shut down the whole of Israel. He was so convinced that he was doing the right thing that he even advised other countries to do the same. His court case for alleged financial misdemeanours was postponed and he was able to concentrate, as acting prime minister (and in the absence of a new coalition), on handling the prospective defeat of the evil virus from China. He Page 29