Study with Rabbi Perlin (4/30/2020)
Lessons from the Pandemic of 1918 and its Predecessors
A TBS Class with Rabbi Amy R. Perlin, D.D. on Thursday, April 30, 2020 at 1 PM
with tremendous gratitude to my dear friend and esteemed colleague Rabbi Gary P. Zola, Ph.D.,
Executive Director of The Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives, HUC-JIR in Cincinnati, Ohio
for providing me with some of the research from the American Jewish Archives and his own writing at my request.
Yellow Fever Epidemic in 1789
Dr. Gary P. Zola – Weekly Shabbat Message
for the
Cincinnati Campus Facebook Site Pesach – 5780
April 10, 2020 ט”ז ניסן תש”פ
Simon Dubnow (1860-1941), the prodigious scholar of Jewish history, believed that there was inspirational value in studying the lives of our forebears: “Our wonderful unparalleled past attracts us with magnetic power” Dubnow once wrote, “[the] exhibition of spirit triumphant, subduing the pangs of the flesh, must move every heart, and exercise uplifting influence upon the non-Jew no less than upon the Jew.”1
This history of Jewish life in America validates Dubnow’s contention. Our American Jewish forbears bequeathed to us countless examples of the “spirit triumphant.” In 1798, for instance, a virulent Yellow Fever epidemic overtook the citizens of New York City. More than 2,000 men, women, and children lost their lives – possibly 2 or 3% of the city’s total population. After the worst days of the plague had passed and the profusion of death began to subside, the clergy of New York organized a day of “Thanksgiving, Humiliation, and Prayer” on February 5, 1799. Leaders of every religious tradition participated in the special ceremony, and each one offered words of gratitude for “the removal of a malignant and mortal disease which had prevailed in the city.”
One of the speakers that day was the Reverend Gershom Mendes Seixas (1745 – 1816), the first native-born Jewish religious leader in the U.S. Seixas’s words merit our attention 221 years after they were spoken:
“To pretend to specify all of the particular blessings we enjoyed amidst the terrific evil of the late epidemic would be descending too much in the minutia of things: suffice it to say in general terms, that we had a regular supply of the real necessaries of life, though attended somewhat with more difficulty than common in the procuring of them.”2
Seixas’s insightful words should animate all of us as we face the discomfiting challenges of the present moment. Let us try mightily to remind ourselves of the blessings we enjoy during the difficult times we are currently facing. Let us never forget that the “real necessaries of life” are composed of the love of family, the fidelity of friends, the comfort of home and hearth, and the gifts of the human “spirit triumphant.”
So especially during these days of Passover, let the “magnetic power” of our remarkable heritage “move every heart” and imbue us with deep faith in the conviction that a better day will dawn for us tomorrow.
1Simon Dubnow, Jewish History; an Essay in the Philosophy of History (Freeport, N.Y.,: Books for Libraries Press, 1972): 28, 37.
2David de Sola Pool, Portraits Etched in Stone; Early Jewish Settlers, 1682-1831 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1952): 271-272.
In this illustration from a 1349 book by the French chronicler Gilles li Muisis, residents of a town stricken by the plague burn Jews, who were blamed for causing the disease. (WIKIMEDIA)
How Jews have fared during pandemics throughout history
By Gabriel Greschler | March 19, 2020
Once the deadly virus started spreading all over the world, devastated communities struggled to confront a pandemic they did not fully understand. Soon the finger-pointing started as people looked for someone to blame: It was the Jews.
It was the mid-14th century, and the Black Death had begun to ravage Europe. In the end, it reduced the overall population by about a third. Rumors spread that it was a Jewish conspiracy, and as a result Jews suffered terrible persecution.
“When there are big epidemics, people get scared,” said Rutgers University’s Martin J. Blaser, a historian and professor of medicine and microbiology. “They often look to blame some kind of intruder or stranger. It has happened especially with the Jews.”
Throughout the European continent, it was said that Jews were poisoning wells with the plague. Blaser said there is evidence of European Jewish communities being massacred during this time, a period he described as the “worst persecution of Jews” before the Holocaust.
One source of the conspiracy theory may have been the lower death rates among Jewish communities. Blaser said that could have been related to the fact that once a year, Jews cleaned out their grain supply for Passover, lowering their chances of being exposed to rats, carriers of the plague.
From the Black Death all the way up to the measles outbreak in 2019, Jews have been used as scapegoats for outbreaks of disease, Blaser said.
Jews in New York City were blamed for last year’s measles outbreak, which disproportionately affected Orthodox Jewish communities. Health officials believe it was more easily spread in the tight-knit community because of the large number of children in each family, extensive international travel and low rates of vaccination. The Anti-Defamation League reported a spike in anti-Semitic incidents related to the outbreak.
Interestingly, it seems that Jews were not blamed for the Spanish Flu of 1918, the influenza pandemic that killed an estimated 50 million people around the globe. Jews even played a pivotal role in fighting it. San Francisco’s health department was headed by a number of Jews, including Lawrence Arnstein, who helped organize the Red Cross response to the disease. Matilda Esberg, president of the Congregation Emanu-El Sisterhood, was also involved in overseeing the response.
During the current coronavirus pandemic, Chinese and Asians have been blamed and discriminated against because the disease originated in China. Asian Americans have faced racist attacks, and there have been reports of Chinese businesses seeing a downturn in customers.
Blaser sees parallels to how Jews were treated during past outbreaks of disease.
“It’s the same mob mentality,” Blaser said. “Finding a victim. Unfortunately for Chinese people, they’ve borne the brunt of this so far.”
Gabriel Greschler is a staff writer at J (Jewish News of Northern California) You can reach him at gabriel@jweekly.com and follow him on Twitter @ggreschler.
From the Hebrew Union College Monthly Vol. IX, January 1923, No. 3, p. 7 in an article by Moses Ezekiel of Bombay, India entitled, “Reminiscences of the late Rabbi Eli Mayer
Rabbi Mayer died of influenza in 1920, in NY, where he was the rabbi of Temple Beth Emeth, of Albany. In this article, Moses Ezekiel share a quote he wrote from a letter during the pandemic of 1918:
“These are a few pathetic words he wrote to me expressing his solicitiude for his flock, when the scourge of influenza broke out in 1918 in Philadelphia, Pa.
‘Right after the New Year and Atonement days the terrifying epidemic, influenza attacked the city of Philadelphia, Pa., in a most grievous manner. I suppose you can realize, in part, how sad those days were for all of us, when I tell you that in twenty consecutive days I officiated at twenty-one funerals. Most of the people whom I buried were young men and women between the ages of twenty and thirty, and strangely enough of the most robust and healthy type. I have never experienced such a sorrowful catastrophe. I trust it be God’s will that I never live through another such a visitation of the plague.”
From The American Israelite (published from 1874-2000) dated October 10, 1918 p. 6
At the end of an article which included a description of a farewell party for Rabbi Solomon B. Freehof, who had enlisted as a chaplain, and the entrance to the college as a new student Maurice N. Eisendrath, the final paragraph reads:
“By the order of the Board of Health of Cincinnati all schools and colleges have been closed. This college will remain closed until this order is rescinded.”
From The American Israelite (published from 1874-2000) dated November 21, 1918 p. 6
“Dr. Nathan Krass, who was in the city as a representative of the Jewish Welfare Board in connection with the War Chest drive, visited the college and addressed the student body. President Kohler officially responded for the college which had been closed on account of the influenza with timely words suggested for the victorious ending of the war…
…The names of the benefactors of the college whose death anniversary fell in the weeks during which the college was closed, were read and Kaddish recited in their memory…
…The number of requests for student substitutes from congregations whose rabbis are on a leave of absence are larger than the number of students available for the purpose.”
From The American Israelite (published from 1874-2000) dated December 5, 1918 p. 6
Under Local news:
Owing to the prevalence of the influenza Dr. Greenebaum, the physician of the Hebrew Union College, has ordered the college doors closed for several days.
Later in the article it says,
A protest against the massacre of Jews in Galicia may be sent directly to President Wilson, it was stated Sunday by members of the Galician-American organization of Cincinnati. Plans for a mass meeting of Jewish citizens of Cincinnati are to be discussed at a meeting of the following committee named by the organizaion:… The meeting is to be held a the Jewish Settlement, 415 Clinton Street.
Note: At the time, according to the article, there were five temples listed:
Plum Street Temple -Rev.Dr. Louis Grossmann
Rockdale Avenue Temple -Rev. Dr. David Philipson
Reading Road Temple-Rev. Dr. Jacob Kaplan
Avondale Synagogue (Orthodox) -Rabbi Louis Feinberg
Tifereth Israel Congregation (no leader listed)
Under Hebrew Union College
Rabbi Solomon Lowenstein (’01) superintendent of the New York Orphan Asylum, who had recently returned from Palestine where he was sent with the Red Cross Commission, addressed the students in the College Chapel last Sabbath afternoon, giving some of his observations in Palestine.
The forthcoming issue of the Student Monthly is dedicated to the memory of Joseph E. Sales.
Word has been received that student Jacob R. Marcus, who is overseas, has been promoted to Second Lieutenancy.
Dr. Maurice B. Hexter, who succeeds Dr. Bogen as lecturer on Sociology with reference to Jewish Philanthropy, began his course last week.
From The American Israelite (published from 1874-2000) dated December 12, 1918 p. 6
Hebrew Union College
Owing to the prevalence of the influenza all schools except the University have been closed. Dr. Greenebaum, college physician, advised the closing of the college until the health situation improves.
Should the college be opened this Saturday, Kaddish will be recited in memory of the late president of the Board of Governors, Edward L. Hensheimer, first of anniversary of whose death occurs this week.
The American Israelite (published from 1874-2000); dated Dec 26, 1918. p. 6
From Dr. Zola in an email to Rabbi Perlin
- Tragically, a young and very promising HUC student caught the flu and died, just prior to his ordination. His name was Rabbi Joseph E. Sales. I am attaching several interesting items relating to this sad situation: (a) minutes of the Board of Governors; (b) the published copy of the Memorial Service that the school held in his honor. Eulogies were delivered by Dr. Kaufmann Kohler, Student Rabbi Joseph Fink, and Student Rabbi Albert Minda.
March 11: The 1918 Flu Epidemic
March 10, 2017 Posted by Lawrence Bush in Jewish Currents
The first case in the U.S. of the so-called “Spanish flu,” an influenza strain that killed between 20 and 40 million people worldwide, including nearly 600,000 Americans, was reported at the Army hospital in Fort Riley, Kansas on this date in 1918. Within a week, the hospital was dealing with 500 cases and 48 deaths. A 2006 study focused on Hartford, Connecticut determined that Southern and Eastern European immigrants were significant carriers of the disease in the U.S., and people who came in contact with them were “most likely to contact the flu and die from it.” According to the U.S. National Library of Medicine’s Alan M. Kraut, “Native-born individuals or immigrants not of Southern or Eastern European origin who resided in areas with high concentrations of Southern and Eastern Europeans also had a higher probability of contracting the disease.” Yet New York City, with a high concentration of both Jews and Italians, did not suffer worse rates of the flu than other cities, in part because New York had already mobilized, two decades earlier against tuberculosis, which was widely known as “the Jewish disease.” The Forward wrote in 1918 that “In the Jewish community, the head of the rabbinic court or Beys Din of New York announced that Jews in mourning who must sit shiva ‘can and must be lenient with regard to the laws of mourning.’ Mourners were required by Jewish law to stay at home, do no work or domestic tasks, or even change clothes or bathe. However, because of the flu, mourners were told, ‘He who lives in narrow rooms or such a one who must have fresh air may go around outside for a few hours each day on account of health.’ The bereaved were told they could buy food and need not go barefoot, ‘even at home, but wear shoes in order not to catch a cold. God forbid.’”
“Dr. Maurice Fishberg, a Russian-born physician and amateur anthropologist, collected data to refute allegations that Eastern European Jewish immigrants were inherently sicker than the general population. Instead, Fishberg and others argued that Eastern European Jewish immigrants often arrived in ill health because they had lived impoverished lives, with inadequate nutritious food, poor sewage, and contaminated drinking water. Their pre-departure environment was typically a frigid breeding ground for disease. And conditions after arrival were usually not much better . . . Not surprisingly, the Spanish influenza epidemic of 1918 aroused fears of anti-Semitism within the Jewish immigrant community. History had taught Jewish spokespeople that they must at all costs deflect blame for the pandemic away from Jewish immigrants less they trigger the sort of medicalized anti-Semitism they had left Eastern Europe to escape.”
–Alan M. Kraut
In another article, Dr. Kraut writes about the role of the Yiddish newspaper in educating Jews of the pandemic:
US National Library of Medicine
National Institutes of Health
Alan M. Kraut, PhDa
Author information Copyright and License information Disclaimer
This article has been cited by other articles in PMC.
The Forverts (also known as the Jewish Daily Forward and hereafter Forward) was New York’s Yiddish-language daily newspaper, launched in 1897 by the Forward Association, dedicated to the cause of democratic socialism. At its zenith, it was one of the most widely read newspapers in the country, with a circulation of 200,000 in 1924. Many people who were illiterate, including many Eastern European immigrant women, had Forward articles read and explained to them by those who could read. Under the editorship of Abraham Cahan from 1911 to 1953, the paper became an essential element in the life of the Jewish immigrant community and Cahan labored not only on behalf of trade unionism and socialism, but on behalf of his community’s health, well-being, and integration into the broader life of American society and culture. If Jewish immigrants were to tread the road to assimilation and acceptance, they must be healthy and robust.
In the fall of 1918, the Forward’s first task was to explain the illness to the Jewish immigrant community and explain why cases must be reported. The paper warned, “Influenza is often the prelude to pneumonia, which ends very often with death.” Noting that previously flu need not be reported, the article emphasized, “The Health Commissioner has ordered that from now on, doctors should report on every case of influenza and pneumonia, exactly as they do for [other] contagious illnesses.”57 Likewise, the Forward kept its readers apprised of the epidemic’s spread.58,59 (p. 20, 47–8; p. 288) On September 21, the paper informed readers that 47 new cases had been reported to the New York Board of Health, but that the Commissioner had been reassuring nevertheless and explained that meetings were being held to prevent the flu’s transmission. Meanwhile, the Forward advised readers to “be cautious; if anyone should sneeze, he should not sneeze into someone’s face, but into a handkerchief.” Such advice did not consider the obvious. For impoverished immigrants, many from rural villages, standards of etiquette and urban hygiene were still lessons to be learned. Not everyone owned a handkerchief.
Throughout September, the number of newly reported cases mounted. On September 25, a Forward headline warned, “Influenza Spreads: 150 New Cases; Doctors Warn.”60 Now almost every issue included “new rules” on flu prevention.61 The Forward advised readers to not use hand towels in public places and not to drink from cups that others had used. Knowing the popularity of candy stores and soda fountains in immigrant neighborhoods, Yiddish-speaking Jews were reminded, “Above all you should in particular be careful in ice-cream soda places: do not drink if the glass has not been completely and appropriately cleaned.” There were warnings against public spitting and using “any napkins, handkerchiefs, clothes or bedding that an ill person has used.” In a community where many smoked, pipe smokers were reminded, “Do not smoke from a pipe that has been in another’s mouth.” While few Jewish immigrant households in this era had their own telephones, many used public phones and were reminded, “When you speak on the telephone, keep your mouth farther from the receiver.” These were familiar words of advice, not unlike reminders designed to avoid transmission of tuberculosis, the bane of impoverished immigrants. Children were of special concern and readers were cautioned, “Do not let your child play with things that belong to other children.”62
Who was the authority? To whom ought immigrants pay attention? The Forward’s readers, like those of the Italian newspapers, were told to heed the directives of Health Commissioner Copeland. When in October 1918 Copeland ordered all stores except food stores to close no later than 4 p.m., readers were told that he had “consulted with [other] doctors and superiors.”
Closed houses of worship served during 1918 flu pandemic
By Peter Smith / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 4-21-20
The faded, single-spaced letter from the fall of 1918 has a jolting immediacy to readers today.
© Provided by Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
“A very unusual opportunity has come to Calvary Church,” the clergy of the Episcopal congregation in Shadyside wrote to its members. “To meet the present emergency of our pandemic-stricken community, the Vestry (governing board) has tendered the use of the Parish House to the United States Military authorities. The rooms will be used as a convalescent hospital” for military trainees recovering from influenza.
The global influenza pandemic of 1918 known as the Spanish flu peaked in Pittsburgh in October and November, ultimately killing more than 4,500 people and infecting more than 60,000 throughout Allegheny County, according to historical accounts. Worldwide, it claimed at least 50 million lives, according to estimates cited by the Centers for Disease Control.
Though far deadlier than the current pandemic, the influenza competed on newspapers’ front pages with the American military’s grinding progress in World War I and a relentless campaign to buy war bonds. Yet the headlines have a familiar feel. Houses of worship were shuttered as pastors urged people to worship in their homes, and faith-based groups rallied to help those affected by the illness.
… (Info about the church)
The Jewish Criterion told of similar efforts by various Jewish charities, from financial relief to burials, aiding Jews and non-Jews. The nurses and other workers from the Irene Kauffman Settlement House, a precursor of the Jewish Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh, “have gone into hundreds of homes visited by disease and death and given help to the sick and cheer and comfort to the bereaved,” the Criterion wrote. Women prepared “broths and other nourishing foods” for the sick.
By early November, local officials were agitating to end the state’s restrictions on public gatherings. The Pittsburgh Council of Church’s vice president told the Pittsburgh Post he would support keeping churches closed to protect public health even though he didn’t think it necessary, as “people do not ordinarily go to church when they are sick; most people take the first excuse that offers itself to stay home from church.”
Soon the bans were lifted and an interfaith thanksgiving service was held at the end of November, with Catholic, Jewish and Protestant clergy giving thanks for victory in World War I.
Calvary Episcopal Church today sees its forebears’ actions during the pandemic as setting an enduring example of opening doors to those in need, said its rector, the Rev. Jonathon Jensen. The church has opened its large sanctuary for use by Tree of Life / Or L’Simcha Congregation for its holiday services since the fatal 2018 anti-Semitic attack on its congregants.
“When the Tree of Life synagogue was in need for their high holiday services, we offered our space to them,” Rev. Jensen said. “If the Pittsburgh community is need of our facilities as a temporary hospital, Calvary will offer the space.”
Peter Smith: petersmith@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1416; Twitter @PG_PeterSmith.
A Long-Forgotten Jewish Remedy for the Coronavirus Outbreak
By Jeremy Brown– published online in Lehrhaus
February 11, 2020
…In the last century there was, however, a particularly Jewish response to a life-threatening epidemic. It was known in Yiddish as the Shvartze Chassaneh, the Black Wedding, and took place in response to the terrible waves of cholera, typhus, and influenza that ravaged the Jews of Eastern Europe, Israel, and North America.
The ceremony was simple: a man and women, each unmarried and either impoverished, orphaned, or disabled (sometimes all three) were married together as husband and wife under a huppah – in a cemetery. The couple’s new home was established with donations by the community. With this act of group hesed, it was hoped that the plague would be averted.
For example, one such ceremony took place 101 years ago, as the Jews of Philadelphia gathered in a cemetery with the goal of defeating the deadly influenza outbreak. By the time it was finally over, the Great Flu Pandemic of 1918-1919 claimed 50-100 million lives worldwide. In the U.S. over 670,000 people died, and the dead were piling up in the city of Philadelphia.[1] And so the Jews there celebrated a Black Wedding.
According to newspaper reports, they chose Fanny Jacobs and Harold Rosenberg as their bride and groom. The two were married at the “first line of graves in the Jewish cemetery” near Cobbs Creek at 3pm on Friday October 25, 1918. More than a thousand Jews watched as Rabbi Lipschutz officiated at the huppah. “And when amid their stark surroundings,” the report continued, “the couple were pronounced man and wife, the orthodox among the spectators filed solemnly past the couple and made them presents of money in sums from ten cents to a hundred dollars, according to the means and circumstances of the donor, until more than $1,000 had been given.”[2]
The Jewish community had chosen this intervention so that “the attention of God would be called to the affliction of their fellows if the most humble man and woman among them should join in marriage in the presence of the dead.” An odd choice for today perhaps, but not as odd as it might seem given the reality of life during the Great Flu Pandemic. Today we know that influenza is caused by a virus, but in 1918 viruses had not been discovered. We now know that influenza is transmitted by droplets; back then, there was no such notion. We now have antibiotics to treat secondary bacterial pneumonias, but these would not be discovered for another three decades. A century ago there were many theories as to the cause of influenza, whose very name points to its presumed etiology. It comes from the Italian word meaning influence, because it was believed that the disease was caused by an inauspicious alignment of the planets. There were other suggestions too. The famous seventeenth-century English physician Thomas Sydenham believed these epidemics were related to heavy rains that filled the blood with “crude and watery particles.”[3] Following a devastating outbreak of influenza in the winter of 1889 there were rumors that the epidemic had been brought to Britain by imported Russian oats, which were eaten by horses who then spread the infection into the human population. Other theories of origin included rotting animal carcasses, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and effluvia discharged into the air from the bowels of the earth.
In truth, no one had a clue what caused influenza, and without an obvious etiology, people suggested all kinds of cures. Some used organic remedies: burning orange peels or dicing onions to sterilize the room. Others recommended a tea-spoonful of Friar’s balsam, a small handful of eucalyptus leaves, or tonics containing quinine. (Grove’s Tasteless Chill Tonic was especially popular, and made the Grove family fantastically rich). All physicians prescribed laxatives for their patients, and most suggested alcohol. “There is no finer pick-me-up after an attack of influenza,” wrote one American physician, “than good ‘fiz.’” Britain’s Chief Medical Officer suggested half a bottle of light wine daily.
Some physicians resorted to bloodletting, the practice of draining the body of blood, and therefore, in theory, of toxins and disease. It had been a mainstream medical practice for more than two thousand years. The procedure is frequently described in the Talmud, which mandated a blessing to be made before it was undertaken. In 1918 British doctors had performed bloodletting on ailing servicemen. They claimed it had worked, and published their experience in the British Medical Journal. We look back in horror, but at the time it was cutting-edge science.
Regardless of whether they believed in the treatments they were prescribing, physicians certainly understood the importance of maintaining morale in the face of the pandemic. “It is our duty,” said Chicago’s health commissioner that winter, “to keep the people from fear. Worry kills more people than the epidemic. For my part, let them wear a rabbit’s foot on a gold watch chain if they want it, and if it will help them to get rid of the physiological action of fear.”[4] Which is precisely what the Jews of Philadelphia did on that cold October afternoon. But instead of carrying a rabbit’s foot, they made their way to the Cobbs Hill cemetery.
Although its origins are entirely unknown, the Black Wedding had been imported from Eastern Europe, where it had been practiced since the eighteenth century. The earliest recorded Black Wedding was performed in 1785 in the presence of one of the great founders of the Hasidic movement, Rabbi Elimelich of ּּLizhensk. It took place in response to an outbreak of cholera. The bride was a thirty-six-year-old villager and the groom a thirty-year-old water carrier, and despite their humble situation, the wedding was attended by other Hasidic leaders including the famed Seer of Lublin.[5]
Black Weddings took place in both Safed and Jerusalem in 1865 following another natural disaster: a massive plague of locusts that had destroyed the crops and resulted in the deaths of many hundreds. An eyewitness account reported that “the leaders of that holy city took boys and girls who were orphans and married them off to each other. The huppot were in a cemetery between the graves of our teacher the Ari z”l [Rabbi Isaac Luria Ashkenazi] and the Beit Yosef [Rabbi Yosef Karo]. For this was a tradition that they had, and thanks to God who removed this deathly outbreak from among them.”[6] The wedding in Jerusalem took place on the Mount of Olives, “was attended by many, and was a very joyous occasion.”[7] There are newspaper reports of similar ceremonies in Berdichev in northern Ukraine in 1866, Opatow, Poland in 1892, and in the small Ukrainian village of Olyka, which suffered from a typhus epidemic, as human and animal corpses were left unburied on the battlefields of World War I.
The Black Wedding in Philadelphia during the Great Influenza Pandemic was not unique to the Unites States. Two weeks later, on Monday, November 11, the ceremony was performed in Winnipeg, Canada. Under the headline “Hebrews Hold ‘Wedding of Death’ to Halt Flu,” a local newspaper reported that the elaborate wedding had been planned for more than a month. “At one end of the cemetery a quorum of ten Jews conducted a funeral. At the other, 1,000 Gentiles and Jews witnessed the wedding… Harry Fleckman and Dora Wisman were contracting parties at the wedding. Rabbis Khanovitch and Gorodsy officiated.”[8] And Odesskiye Novosti, a Ukrainian newspaper, described a Black Wedding that had been arranged “in order to contain the two epidemics raging in Odessa – the Spanish flu and cholera.”[9]
In the early nineteenth century and in response to their own outbreaks of cholera, towns from Massachusetts to Kentucky had observed a public day of fasting and prayer “by designation of the civil authorities.”[10] With no notion as to the cause of the illness, no way to prevent its spread, and no medications to alleviate the suffering, it is little wonder that the Jewish communities turned to folk medicine and married off poor orphans in a Black Wedding. For really, what else was there to do?
As we wait to see how far the current coronavirus outbreak spreads, we should pause and reflect on our good fortune. We now understand the etiology and can often conquer those diseases that were mysterious and life-threatening to our great-grandparents. Vaccines, public-health interventions, and antimicrobial drugs generally keep us safe. And, in the face of an epidemic, we no longer need to gather at the local cemetery and marry off a destitute couple in order to invoke God’s mercy.
[1] Jeremy Brown. Influenza: The Hundred-Year Hunt to Cure the Deadliest Disease in History. Simon and Schuster 2018.
[2] Public Ledger of Philadelphia, October 21, 1918.
[3] Brown, Influenza, 32.
[4] G. M. Price, “Influenza—Destroyer and Teacher,” Survey 1918. 41 (12): 367–369.
[5] Avraham Chayim Michelson, Ohel Elimelech. Przemysl 1910, 66.
[6] Moshe Nussbam, Sefer Sha’arei Yerushalayim. Warsaw, Shmuel Earglbrand, 1868, 39b.
[7] Eliyahu Porush, Zikhronot Rishonim, Jerusalem, 1963.
[8] Winnipeg Evening Tribune, November 11, 1918.
[9] Odesskiye Novosti, October 2, 1918.
[10] The American Quarterly Register, November 1832. Vol. 5(2), 97.
Jeremy Brown is the author, most recently, of Influenza: The Hundred-Year Hunt to Cure the Deadliest Disease in History (Simon and Schuster 2018). He is an emergency physician and writes on science in the Talmud at Talmudology.com. He is the Director of the Office of Emergency Care Research at the National Institutes of Health.
A PRAYER FOR THE PANDEMIC OF 2020
(Based on Rabbi Abraham Cronbach’s Prayer for the Epidemic of 1918) by
Gary P. Zola
Rock of Ages who strengthens us on our way. Grant that our hearts might be filled with strength and hope at this time of trouble and worry. Endow us with wisdom and the caution we need to keep the dreaded sickness far from us. Bless and enlighten all our physicians and nurses – and all our fellow citizens who risk their own lives in a tireless effort to safeguard the public health. Heal those whom the plague has afflicted and those who may yet be affected. Comfort all those unto whom bereavement has come.
Protect us together with all our brothers and sisters in America, in Israel, and in every land and every nation. Guide us all on our way and help us to foster a world that is truly animated by a spirit of light and love.
A PRAYER FOR AFTER THE PANDEMIC OF 2020
(Based on Rabbi Abraham Cronbach’s Prayer After the Epidemic of 1918) by
Gary P. Zola
Thankful are we, O Source of life and healing, for preserving our lives and sustaining our spirits through the many days of trial and danger that we experienced. Hold fast our hearts, so that the gifts of health and peace and gratitude renew our days as of old.