Five teenagers were arrested on March 31 for allegedly assaulting and robbing a Chabad rabbi at Yale University earlier that evening.
New Haven Independent reported that two of the teens – both of whom are 16 – approached Chabad House’s Rabbi Yehoshua Rosenstein while he was on a phone call outside the house. One of the teens said to Rosenstein, “Give us everything you have, you f—ing Jew!” before they punched and kicked him to the ground. They stole his car keys and drove off with his vehicle.
Police later chased down the stolen vehicle and arrested the five teens inside the car. The two 16-year-olds face hate crime, assault and conspiracy charges; the other three teens – ages 15, 16 and 17 – face charges of robbery, larceny, conspiracy and weapon in a motor vehicle, as a gun was found in the car.
Rosenstein was not hospitalized for his injuries. “I will be OK,” he told the Independent. “It happened. I’m traumatized. I’ll rally. I have a great support system.”
He added, “I’m grateful to God for sparing my life. I’m grateful to God for being alive and waking up this morning to spend time with my wife and kids and community. This could have been a disaster.”
Anti-Defamation League (ADL) Connecticut tweeted, “We were deeply disturbed to hear about this attack and have been in contact with the Police Chiefs of the city of New Haven and Yale University.”
We were deeply disturbed to hear about this attack and have been in contact with the Police Chiefs of the city of New Haven and Yale University. https://t.co/6tZhkRrB8f
B’nai Brith International tweeted, “We condemn [the] anti-Semitic attack on Rabbi Rosenstein of Yale Chabad. We stand in full solidarity with him, particularly before Passover, & pray for quick recovery. @NewHavenPD must prosecute actively as hate crime.”
We condemn anti-Semitic attack on Rabbi Rosenstein of Yale Chabad. We stand in full solidarity with him, particularly before Passover, & pray for quick recovery. @NewHavenPD must prosecute actively as hate crime. @chabad remains on front lines of Jewish communal service globally.
“I wanna play and hang out with my friends, but we gotta practice social distance,” the 12-year-old girl sings to Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance.” “Go read a book, please don’t give me that look, we gotta practice social distance,” the mom replies. The next shot cuts to a family of five — six feet apart, of course — on the front lawn for a dance break.
Welcome to the fledgling, quarantine-time YouTube presence of the Nickerson family, helmed by writer-mom Julia Dosik Nickerson and Wilshire Boulevard Temple rabbi-dad Joel Nickerson and featuring their daughters, Ella (12), Kayla (10) and Rebecca (6 ¾). To date, the family has released three music videos, featuring quarantine-related parodies of pop songs “U Can’t Touch This” (MC Hammer), Gaga’s “Bad Romance” and “My House” (Flo Rida). And others are coming.
The parents brainstorm which songs to choose and tackle the parody lyric. After they lay down the track and mix the music, the kids help shape the look of the video when they shoot it. Ella also helps her father edit.“They help come up with ideas,” Nickerson said. “It’s been a good way of keeping them engaged.”
The Nickerson parents already had a weekly video tradition, “Date Day,” where they grab a few minutes to walk and talk with each other (with the camera).
“This was a way to make it a whole family affair,” Nickerson said. “They get featured and it’s not just us doing our thing.”
“There’s a lesson in finding laughter even when things are challenging,” Dosik Nickerson said, a lesson she learned from her Holocaust survivor grandparents, especially her grandmother. “[She] always said ‘think about the good things.’ She said we had to find the light in the darkness and the goodness. That lesson has helped me throughout my entire life. This is where you can find the cracks for the light to come in.”
In “Date Night (in Quarantine),” the parents prep for a special night out. “Wish we could dress real nice and see a show, but the driveway is as far as we’ll go,” Mom laments, as she and Dad head toward the open back of their minivan, where two small chairs and a table await them for their date.
Because this video featured the adults, Ella filmed most of it on her iPhone, while the song played on the computer so everyone could sing along. “They become part of the process once we’re filming,” Dosik Nickerson said. “That’s the exciting part for them. The nice thing is that we’re not so worried about the quality in terms of our technical abilities. The joy is the experience of it.”
Although the videos aren’t specifically Jewish, one of the Nickersons’ goals is to raise awareness of important quarantine-related information, like adhering to social distancing, not touching one’s face and that adults “don’t have to give up romantic time,” as Nickerson put it. “Just pop open the SUV,” said Dosik Nickerson.
“I do think our videos are fun but we’re trying to raise awareness for our children that you can take your situation and make something creative from it, and collaborate,” Nickerson said.
Both parents identify themselves as social people and admit that they have to “build a different muscle” in learning to communicate solely through technology. The pair anticipates that Zoom and other technologies may be the subject of a future video.
Their family video projects are an opportunity to find some positivity in what Dosik Nickerson called “a barrage of negativity. Some people tend to go toward the dark especially when all we’re seeing are these negative images and upsetting newscasts,” she said. “Friends and family are having a difficult time. For someone who’s lost someone or someone who is ill, it’s difficult to find some positivity. Every family has a different version of what finding something positive from their day is. Our version is doing videos. Finding positivity in small things is where we have to be right now.”
“It has to be intentional,” Nickerson added. “People aren’t spending as much time as they could being reflective. For us the videos are one element in trying to be intentional in how we are spending our time.”
For the rabbi, who only started at Wilshire Boulevard Temple this past summer, these videos,which he called “a nice bonding time with the family,” help in balancing work life and home life. However, he anticipates that it is “going to get harder to do as time goes on. “We’re going to see a dip in people’s levels of optimism and willingness to think bigger is going to get harder,” he said. “We need to think about how to create, in professional and personal life, triggers of accountability to keep doing that. Julia and I are good at helping each other keep that momentum going.”
For now, the personal momentum continues. The couple reports that their older daughters are writing their own parodies, while the youngest said she wants to be a part of it “because we all do it together,” Dosik Nickerson said.
“For both of us,” Nickerson said, “[we’re thinking about] how can we take this time, bond and be creative in a fun way?”
“You have to find some laughter,” Dosik Nickerson said. “We’ll probably finish Netflix by the time this is over.”
UPDATE: This story has been updated to include their latest “Wear a Mask” video.
Jewish religion teaches that life is the most precious element in existence. Life itself is grounded in God, the source of life, who sustains it lovingly at all times. Accordingly, our planet is structured to favor life. Out of love, God seeks to fill the world with life. “The world was not created to be void; it was brought into being to be settled, filled with life.” (Isaiah 45:18). The goal of religion – all religions – is to recruit humanity to join in partnership with God to increase life in the world.
More dramatically, Judaism promises that if we go all out in this partnership, we can repair this mortal, flawed world. We can turn the planet into a paradise, full of life, where all forms of life are upheld in their fullest dignity and value. In such a world, all human lives will be treated as being of infinite value and the elderly will receive special honor and care. In the Biblical vision, if we persist, we can achieve the triumph of life over all its enemies – poverty, hunger, oppression, war, sickness – even death itself. In our times, the messianic promises have become more credible, thanks to breakthroughs in every field of science, medicine, industry and agriculture. Human life expectancy has more than doubled in the past two centuries.
Judaism promises that if we go all out in this partnership, we can repair this mortal, flawed world.
Now comes the coronavirus plague which directly assaults and undercuts every one of these teachings. This enemy of life is relentless and cruel and especially targets the elderly and the medically vulnerable. The pandemic means that a mass killer is on the loose. And the planet is presently structured to enable its spread and to overwhelm the medical, healing systems. Unless we go all out, we are threatened with a decisive victory for death over life. That would make a mockery of our dreams.
How shall we respond? The Torah tells us to see ourselves as soldiers in the army of life, on permanent duty against death. The first priority now is to fight this escalating threat. That means investing in the forty or more projects, worldwide, exploring a vaccine and treatments for the COVID-19 disease. Then as the pandemic shrinks, we permanently increase our underwriting of the medical research, health and hospital systems which we have neglected for decades.
We need to reorganize our daily behaviors as a matter of life and death. Life is fragile so we have to tend to it in every behavior. The Jewish tradition has long taught that there is a constant struggle between life and death. Every behavior presents us with the choice of being on the side of life or of death. That is why there are laws of Kashrut (eating), laws of work and rest, laws of speech. The next food we eat can be healthful or it can move us toward excessive sugar, overweight, or even occlusion of the heart. The water we drink, the air we breathe is life-sustaining – or we can pollute them and harm our health and others’. The next word we utter can be a word of affirmation, consolation, inspiration to live – or it can demolish someone’s dignity, or diminish the quality of life for ourselves and for others. Judaism’s core commandment is to “choose life” (Deuteronomy 30:19) – to structure every behavior on the side of life.
Restructuring our behaviors for life is the needed response to the coronavirus. This entails washing our hands repeatedly, rigorously not shaking hands, trying not to touch our face with our hands, sneezing into tissues, getting adequate sleep – and social distancing, even from family and friends. Kissing, hugging – these were once our most expressive acts of love. In this moment, we hold people closest to our hearts by keeping six feet away. These are religious responsibilities, i.e. binding, whether or not the authorities will punish us or other humans will know. Between God and us, every action is known. Therefore we hold ourselves to the highest standards.
Two Orthodox Jewish men wear face masks on March 31, 2020 in New York. – The number of deaths in the United States from coronavirus has surpassed those reported by China, where the pandemic began in December, according to a toll published on March 31, 2020 by Johns Hopkins University. There have been 3,415 deaths in the US from the virus, the Baltimore-based university said, more than the 3,309 reported officially in China. (Photo by Angela Weiss / AFP) (Photo by ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images)
Out of the realization that we are all at risk, we must choose life for all by connecting together. This leads us to look around for the isolated and most vulnerable and communicate our care. We run errands for those in need. We reach out to our day laborers and gig workers and help tide them over this crash. We promise ourselves that in the future, we will strike a better balance between needs of the self and being part of the circle of humanity. Now we experience that our closest communities sustain us in crisis, as in expansive times. They uphold us in our collective journey toward a repaired world.
There is a midrash that the Messiah will be born on Tisha B’av. This reflects the Jewish teaching that when forces of cruelty, destruction or oppression become dominant, there is a ‘choose life’ response – that is to increase kindness, upbuilding and redemptive activity. On the very day of the greatest destruction of our history before the 20th century, the midrash suggests that the response Jewry will give is to generate the ultimate redemption. It is no coincidence that in the generation of our greatest catastrophe and death, the Holocaust, the Jewish people responded with the creation of the State of Israel and the greatest outburst of life, creation and mutual responsibility of our history. At this moment of fear, enforced isolation and shutting down – and despite the shocking economic setback – our philanthropic and community leadership should respond with a life-affirming outpouring of faith, caring and giving. And since “the human does not live by bread alone”, this should include underwriting education, learning and culture.
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA – MARCH 12: Medical personnel put on protective equipment before taking samples from a person at a drive-thru Coronavirus COVID-19 testing station at a Kaiser Permanente facility on March 12, 2020 in San Francisco, California. Kaiser Permanente has opened a drive-thru Coronavirus test station where patients who are exhibiting signs and symptoms of the Coronavirus can be referred by a physician to be tested. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
Going forward, there are lessons to be learned. There is serious evidence that this pathogen was unleashed because people ate endangered species. The trade-in eating wildlife which funneled COVID-19 into human society (and before that, the SARS and MERS viruses) should have been stopped long ago – because it was endangering those species’ survival. Going forward, we need to address the economic, medical and environmental impact of the food we are producing. This includes a review of to what extent the domesticated and safer animals we are eating – thanks to industrial farming and husbandry – also fail the test of choosing life. To what extent are they produced by tormenting other living creatures and overstressing the environment?
Religious authorities acted irresponsibly and failed to block transmission. Instead, they allowed or encouraged worshippers to come together in crowds.
We have learned that the disease spread because a dictatorial system, unwilling to admit a flaw, suppressed the truth, silencing the needed early warning. Elsewhere, religious authorities acted irresponsibly and failed to block transmission. Instead, they allowed or encouraged worshippers to come together in crowds. They failed to understand that the God of Life wants humans to live and prioritizes that goal ahead of worship that puts the faithful at risk. Furthermore, religious teachings that invoke God as a magic talisman against real-life threats desecrate the name of God. Those authorities that display know nothing attitudes toward science or proper medical procedures are gross violators of the instruction “Keep my laws and commandments which humans shall do and live by them.” (Leviticus 18:4) This pandemic teaches us that political freedom and scientific research, academic integrity and freedom of speech literally make the difference between life and death.
To stop the panic we have to remind ourselves that we are one generation, a link in the partnership chain of civilization that has brought humanity this far toward a repaired world. Humanity has undergone huge setbacks in the past – both in demographics and in economics. Yet, by closing ranks and helping each other, we have come back from the worst catastrophes to higher levels of well being afterwards.
How do we put the disease in perspective? How do we – especially the elderly but also the young – regain calm and face down the threat of death?
Believers should allow themselves to accept the loving comfort: “I (God) am with him in his trouble.”(Psalms 91:15): We are not alone. God is with us, holding our hand, upholding us. “Though I walk in the valley of the shadow of death, I am not afraid of evil for You are with me.” (Psalms 23:4). Whether we are formally religious or not, there is another consideration. When we chose life and brought love and purpose into our lives, we understood that we had taken on more vulnerability and risk than if we remained self-centered. Then, as now, the right response to increased danger is not to yield to fear or despair. Rather, we increase life so deeply and constructively that it is worth living, whatever our fate.
Rabbi Yitz Greenberg is President of the J.J. Greenberg Institute for the Advancement of Jewish Life and author of “The Triumph of Life” (forthcoming) from which this article is derived.
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Tom Perez, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee. reassured Jewish Democrats that they would be happy with the next party platform.
“We want to make sure that our platform, which is our values statement of our party, is a platform that you can be proud of, a platform that, again, reaffirms our commitment to a two-state solution — negotiated directly by the parties,” Perez told Jewish Democratic leaders in a call last week, according to Jewish Insider.
Why it matters: Platforms are drafted ahead of national conventions in presidential election years, and ahead of the last two elections, the DNC platform has been beset by controversy.
In 2012, the draft committee neglected to include recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and it was inserted at the last minute at a raucous public meeting over loud protests.
In 2016, the DNC opened its foreign policy drafting to the public, and there were tense exchanges over whether to mention Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and its blockade of the Gaza Strip. There was no criticism of the occupation in the final version.
The Republican Party platform also changed from 2012 to 2016. The most recent version omits overt support for a two-state solution and mentions Jerusalem only in describing the city as a capital of Israel, not of Palestine. (President Donald Trump in 2017 recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Congress did the same in 1995.)
I tell you this to break your heart; by which I mean only that it break open and never close again to the rest of the world. – From Lead, by Mary Oliver
In the last few weeks, I have gathered with community at virtual shivah-making super-sized minyans. We perch before our screens and send hearts and messages of condolence and comfort. We support our community as it mourns: a father at the end of a long battle with dementia, a beloved husband and the weekly recitations of Kaddish for those who were lost before the coronavirus war began.
Surgeon General Jerome Adams shares bracing language and it floats in the air like the virus you cannot see and want to dodge, duck your head like a tall person through a small door with jagged broken glass edges, moving quickly and holding your breath, praying silently to remain unharmed.
The surgeon general says: “This week is going to be the hardest and the saddest week of most American’s lives.” The enormity is impossible to understand as the rain patters on my roof and the house is warm and the pantry is stocked with canned goods and matzo.
Doctors and thinkers on grief and mourning have explored the ways that family pets prepare children to understand death and the agony of grief. Today, I am more prepared than yesterday, even at almost 58, no longer a child, I still have more to learn about life’s hardest lesson. Our family’s beloved pup, sweet Dew, little Dew, little man, the dewster, Dew Boy D, sweetest boy with the long eyelashes and soulful gaze died yesterday in my arms in a small “family room” at the animal hospital in Culver City, in his own bed I brought from home, with his favorite toy as a pillow, wrapped in a shredded olive cashmere blanket that has been in our family for 20 years.
It’s a blanket that swaddled the young and not-so-young on our couch in two homes, while reading, watching movies, talking, day-dreaming and napping. I held him as best I could in my plastic gloves and my cotton gown and talked lovingly through my mask. Across the room the doctor administered his mercy. And then his pain was no more and his little soul left the building leaving only his warm silky body in eternal slumber on my lap.
The doctor said I could stay as long as I wished and I did. Gazing lovingly, weeping, saying good-bye, reminding myself that this was real. Accepting. Loving. Mourning. Grieving.
For weeks, several images have haunted my dreams. Who that I love dearly could fall in this coronavirus war? And if it were I, would my affairs be prepared so that I leave no messes behind.The answer is no. And last, perhaps the worst, is how is it possible for people to die alone? I have always rejected the idea that we’re born alone and we die alone. But now it is clear to me you die alone is true in war and in crisis and in disaster and in chaos.
The coronavirus war is here and we are asked to brace ourselves. The Buddhists say “the only way out is through.” Having lost my sweet 13-year-old dog, I have re-learned something I have known in every dark tunnel only to develop amnesia when I come out the other side to the light: the only thing that never dies is love.
While we can, let us give that love away. Let us share it with precautions but not cautiously, this week. May we wrap this country and one another in acts of compassion, generosity, kindness and selflessness. May the week of death receive some pushback from us all.
Samara Hutman is the director of Remember Us: The Holocaust B’nai Mitzvah Project.
This year, Passover seems unreal. Instead of a gathering of friends and family (including the kvetchy relative that we all dread) it’s just going to be the immediate family. The vast majority of Jews celebrate this holiday in one form or another —be it a long seder night of recollections about the genesis of the Jewish people, or just a perfunctory seder with some matzo, wine, the four questions and on to dinner.
For the first time ever I’ll be making a Passover seder with just my wife. No children, grandchildren or the grand community seder we conduct every year. Interestingly, this is exactly the way the Jews celebrated Passover the first time in Egypt 3,332 years ago. It wasn’t a communal celebration. Each family followed a Divine command to bring a sheep into their homes, five days before the Exodus. They were instructed to ritually slaughter the sheep, using it in their homes for the first Passover observance. The sheep was the Egyptians’ deity. The message of the Jewish people to their erstwhile masters was clear: we reject your idolatry and are ushering the age of monotheism into the world. Those who doubted the promise of freedom, and many Jews did, recognized the miracles of God when on Passover eve the Jews left Egypt in haste.
Finding the inspiration to make this year’s Passover special is somewhat daunting. I am reminded of the Russian Jewish refugees that surrounded me in my youth while studying in Israel. They lived through the darkest days of Communism during Stalin’s regime. Many of them part of the Chasidic underground resistance that kept Judaism alive while the Soviets tried to stamp it out. Though the government permitted some elder Jews to congregate in a synagogue for propaganda purposes, the youth were forbidden to study their religion. A network of schools operated by Chabad gathered Jewish children clandestinely to study the Torah inspire them to maintain their religious beliefs. Many of the teachers were arrested and exiled. Some were ultimately killed by the Soviets.
One of the leading activists, Rabbi Lazer Nanes, was sentenced to 20 years in a Siberian labor camp for the crime of teaching Torah. While in the camp, he earned the nickname “Subbota,” or “Sabbath observer,” for his principled refusal to work on Shabbat. The toughest time of the year was the eight days of Passover when he would not eat bread or any other leavened products. It was a battle against starvation. Some years he was sent a few matzos from home with some potatoes or eggs. Other times, sympathetic guards surreptitiously helped him. But there were years he barely made it through the holiday. His dreams of freedom became a reality in 1967. He left Russia and lived until a few months short of his 100th birthday in Jerusalem, where today, a street carries his name.
While we may be alone, let us take inspiration from the fortitude of Rabbi Lazer Nanes, who celebrated the holiday joyously, though completely isolated, in the harshest conditions of Siberia with almost nothing to eat. He could have rationalized that Jewish law would probably permit him to eat some bread if he was liable to starve. Yet, he wholeheartedly observed the commandments and trusted in God.
Today we are celebrating in our homes with an abundance of food, and while our family and friends can’t join us, they are nearby also observing the holiday.
This Passover carries an important message: In just one moment, the Jews who had been enslaved hundreds of years in Egypt, realized freedom, overcoming the oppression of the superpower of the time to leave Egypt with some two and half million people marching with pride. May we too be delivered instantly from the darkest situation that impacts all of humanity this Passover.
Rabbi David Eliezrie is the president of the Rabbinical Council of Orange County California. rabbi@ocjewish.com
The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal of a Jewish death row inmate in Texas who says his judge was anti-Semitic.
Randy Halprin, 42, had been scheduled to be executed on Oct. 10, 2019 but was granted a stay of execution by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals four days before. He was part of the “Texas 7” group of prisoners who escaped from a prison in the state in 2000 and were convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of a police officer who responded to a robbery they committed. Four of them have already been executed.
The Supreme Court did not grant Halprin’s petition for a writ of certiorari on Monday, Courthouse News Service reported. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a four-page opinion that the allegations, while “deeply disturbing,” must first be reviewed by the state trial court. Halprin’s judicial-bias claim is currently awaiting review.
In May 2019, Halprin said in an appeal that the judge who sentenced him in 2003, Vickers Cunningham, referred to him using anti-Semitic slurs, including “f****n’ Jew” and “goddamn k**e.”
In May 2019, Halprin said in an appeal that the judge who sentenced him in 2003, Vickers Cunningham, referred to him using anti-Semitic slurs, including “f****n’ Jew” and “g*****n k**e.”
The Dallas Morning News reported in 2018 that Cunningham, who is white, rewarded his children with a trust if they married someone who is white, Christian and of the opposite sex.
Halprin, who was serving a 30-year sentence for injuring a child at the time of his escape, has said he did not fire his gun the night Officer Aubrey Wright Hawkins was shot 11 times and run over.
“We will continue to seek a new, fair trial for Mr. Halprin,” his attorney, Tivon Schardl, said in a statement sent to reporters on Monday.
Two major Israeli defense companies have developed cutting-edge coronavirus symptom detectors that will allow doctors to remotely pick up on suspicious symptoms of COVID-19. The sensors were created by adapting radar and camera technology that come from the defense and homeland security world.
The program, initiated by the Defense Ministry’s Directorate of Defense Research and Development, has seen Israel Aerospace Industries and Elbit Systems rapidly take radars and elecro-optic (camera) sensors and convert them into highly sensitive sensors that will enable medical teams to screen patients from another room, thereby greatly enhancing their safety.
In recent days, the Defense Ministry announced that its National Emergency Team, together with IAI and Elbit, have developed the prototypes to measure the vital signs of patients, including pulse, respiratory rate and temperature, and pick out patterns that indicate a likely coronavirus infection.
“I don’t know of any adaption of defense technology or homeland security radars for this purpose until now,” said Yossi Cohen, vice president and chief technological officer at Elbit Systems’ C4i and Cyber Division. “Until now, the civilian world didn’t have this need.”
Now, however, and likely in the near future, there will be a dramatic need for remote sensing that protects medical personnel from the risk of infection.
“This development came as a result of a capability that we want to give doctors at the entrance to Emergency Rooms to distinguish [between] patients that have a respiratory and have a chance of [contracting] coronavirus from patients suffering from other patients,” said Cohen.
Currently, medical teams have to examine patients directly through close contact and at longer intervals, putting them in danger of infection. The remote-sensing solutions give doctors the ability to check patients from more than two meters away or even from another room by viewing the results on a screen.
Once they receive the signs, said Cohen, the doctors can decide whether more comprehensive checks are needed, and if so, to move the patient to a more sterile area with the appropriate protective gear to continue the care. “This is a very important requirement,” he said.
Working with the Defense Ministry’s DDR&D and the Rabin Medical Center in Petach Tikvah, Elbit will deliver its first prototype to that hospital before examining ways to expand its program, including installing machines at drive-through test facilities and at the entrances to military bases.
The system is based on radar technology that “allows us to identify, in a very precise manner, small changes,” said Cohen.
The system is based on radar technology that “allows us to identify, in a very precise manner, small changes.”
This ability was modified to allow the radar to detect minute body movements created by the pulse and breath, and measure patterns. The system can even scan for the ratio of inhalations and exhalations, allowing for conclusions to be drawn about the likelihood of a respiratory disease like coronavirus to be involved. The second component of the machine, an advanced thermal camera, can take a highly precise temperature reading and employs advanced algorithms to achieve that precision, said Cohen.
Two successful trials of the prototype have been completed. Elbit is now looking at ways to use artificial intelligence to allow doctors to generate automatic insights based on the readings. “We can let the networks produce insights,” said Cohen. The system will be installed at the Beilinson Hospital in the Rabin Medical Center as of Monday, and doctors will be able to run it without any outside help, as they build up experience in using the sensor.
Coronaviruses research, conceptual illustration. Vials of blood in a centrifuge being tested for coronavirus infection.
‘Built to detect slow, small movements’
Meanwhile, IAI has also developed its own prototype using a radar originally designed to protect perimeters and detect people walking or crawling, or vehicles moving. “We took the smallest of our radars and place the ability to measure pulse and breath rates on it,” said Israel Lupa, executive vice president and chief technological officer of Elta, a division if IAI.
The radar uses a very low frequency, meaning that it is safe to use in close proximity to people, he stressed. “A radar of this type was built to detect slow, small movements,” said Lupa. “The system can already detect minor movements. We adapted this to tracking body movements caused by the breath and pulse.”
Within seconds, the system, which also includes an advanced thermal camera for detecting fever, can deliver an alert (though not a final diagnosis) to medical teams of an indication of a possible COVID-19 patient.
The initiative was launched by the Defense Ministry’s National Emergency Team, which is led by DDR&D Director, Brig. Gen. (Res.) Dr. Dani Gold, who was instrumental in the past for setting up Israel’s Iron Dome air-defense system.
“The combination of the technological capabilities of the defense industries and the extraordinary capabilities of the officers in the DDR&D enables us to adapt systems developed for security purposes to fulfill medical needs in light of the coronavirus,” said Col. A, of the DDR&D.
Dr. Yossi Shaya, of the Beilinson Hospital, stated that “the DDR&D turned to us with the idea of monitoring patients using radar. These are systems that we don’t normally work with, but they asked us what our needs are in the hope that these systems may be adapted to fulfill them. They asked what vital signs should be monitored among corona patients at the point of diagnosis and during treatment—and aimed to do so without the involvement of medical staff.
“The idea is that our medical teams are at the forefront of this fight and should be protected,” he continued, “and the way to do so is to reduce direct contact with corona patients. Thanks to the creative thinking of the DDR&D—of using technology that is normally used against enemies—I hope we will be able to win in the fight against the COVID-19 virus.”
Celebrated food author Paula Shoyer discusses how the pandemic is influencing how we view food, and shares her favorite Passover recipes.
How do we manage our lives during the Coronavirus crisis? How do we keep our sanity? How do we use this quarantine to bring out the best in ourselves? Tune in every day and share your stories with podcast@jewishjournal.com.
Omar Barghouti, the founder of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, said in an April 5 Facebook livestream that it’s perfectly fine for adherents of the movement to use an Israeli coronavirus vaccine.
The Jerusalem Post reported that Barghouti said, “If you use medical equipment from Israel, it’s not a problem. Cooperating with Israel against the virus — to begin with, we didn’t consider it normalization.”
He added: “If Israel finds a cure for cancer, for example, or any other virus, then there is no problem in cooperating with Israel to save millions of lives.”
Some on Twitter accused Barghouti of being a hypocrite.
“Omar Barghouti, Godfather of the #BDS Movement, gives new meaning to term ‘hypocrisy,’ ” pro-Israel activist Arsen Ostrovsky tweeted.
The Israel Advocacy Movement tweeted, “This is how [Barghouti] boycotts Israel: he chose to go to Tel Aviv University, he uses technology built in Israel, he won’t boycott Covid-19 vaccines developed in Israel. Total hypocrite.”
Meet Omar Barghouti, he founded the BDS movement…
This is how he boycotts Israel:
🔸 He chose to go to Tel Aviv University 🔸 He uses technology built in Israel 🔸 He wont boycott Covid-19 vaccines developed in Israel
The United States barred Barghouti from entering the country in April 2019. Among Barghouti’s past statements include him saying in 2013: “We oppose a Jewish state in any part of Palestine. No Palestinian, rational Palestinian, not a sell-out Palestinian, will ever accept a Jewish state in Palestine.”
Barghouti has a master’s degree in ethics from Tel Aviv University.
