The coronavirus cabinet will review an outline on Sunday that will allow hasidim to travel to Uman for Rosh Hashanah, Minister of Religious Affairs Minister Matan Kahana said Thursday.
According to the outline, all travelers will be required to be tested 72 hours before their flight, whether they are vaccinated or not. Similarly, returning to the country will require a coronavirus test 72 hours in advance of one’s flight.
Travelers will be asked to fill out a quarantine form 24 hours before arriving. On arrival, they will once again test at the airport and then enter isolation for a minimum of seven days.
"We learned lessons from the mistakes made last year,” Kahana said. “The outline that has been formulated will allow travel to Uman while maintaining rules that will secure health.”
Last year, when coronavirus was was surging across the country and former coronavirus commissioner Prof. Ronni Gamzu said that allowing Israelis to travel to Uman in the Ukraine on Rosh Hashanah could lead to a spike in infections and they should not go, former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu caved to pressure from the haredim and said he would ensure that at least some of these Israelis could gather at the grave of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov.
Ultimately, some 30,000 pilgrims traveled to Uman, bringing plane loads of sick people back to Israel – most of whom then defied mandatory quarantine requirements, spreading the disease in their own communities and then to the rest of the country.