Sephardi Chief Rabbi: Avoid visiting Western Wall due to coronavirus

The Sephardi Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef responded in a special letter to all those who appealed to him to rule on a variety of religious issues and coronavirus.

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
A woman looks down at the Western Wall during holiday prayers (photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM)
A woman looks down at the Western Wall during holiday prayers
(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM)
Sephardi Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef issued a letter on Thursday in which he urged his followers to avoid attending massive prayers at the Western Wall due to the novel coronavirus.
He did so in an effort to uphold the Health Ministries, who recently banned the gathering of 100 people or more, instructing his followers to treat the instruction as if they were Jewish religious laws.
Noting that the Jewish faith puts a strong emphasis on saving human lives to the extent it is permissible to eat on Yom Kipor and violate Shabbat if these actions are done to save human lives, Rabbi Yosef instructed each man and woman to pray “near their homes” until the outbreak is over.
In addition, he ordered large synagogues not to conduct massive prayers, although he continued by saying that weddings should not be postponed, and held as planned with a small audience.