As the death toll and emergency measures increase daily, Jewish communities in cities across China joined the population at large in the struggle to protect themselves against the new deadly coronavirus and cope with the extreme precautions being taken to guard against the spread of the flu-like respiratory disease. As of Tuesday, the virus has claimed at least 106 lives and infected more than 4,500 people in China alone. Chabad-Lubavitch representatives and other Jewish community leaders across the country are doing their best to help and reassure residents and visitors while taking steps to protect themselves and their families. In China’s capital, Rabbi Shimon Freundlich, co-director of Chabad of Beijing with his wife, Dini, told Chabad.org that he helped secure the evacuation of a Jewish mother and daughter from Palo Alto, Calif., who were visiting family for the Chinese New Year in Wuhan, the epicenter of the virus. Freundlich said he was contacted about the matter by Rabbi Yosef Levin of Chabad of Palo Alto, Calif., where the mother, Dr. Esther Tebeka, and her family are congregants. Tebeka and her 16-year-old daughter flew to safety Tuesday night on a converted U.S. cargo plane bound for San Francisco with 228 others, including U.S. government employees and officials stationed around China. The arrangements were made with the help of one of Freundlich’s congregants, who was able to have Tebeka and her daughter added to the flight. Meanwhile, Freundlich said that he and his family are vigilantly following health protocols calling for constant hand-washing, produce-washing, the avoidance of hand-shaking and the donning of what has become a scarce supply of face masks. He asked three girls who teach in a Beijing Jewish day school to return with 5,000 masks from their recent trip to Cambodia for the Chinese holiday. Rabbi Mordechai Avtzon, head emissary to China and co-director of Chabad of Hong Kong with his wife, Goldie—and fellow emissaries Rabbi Shalom and Dinie Greenberg of Shanghai, Rabbi Avraham and Nechami Greenberg of the Pudong district of Shanghai, and Freundlich and his wife—are leading a joint Chabad of China effort to establish a relief fund to assist Jewish communities around the country. Restricted Travel and Growing Apprehension Elsewhere, despite increasing restrictions on movement and home-to-home temperature checks by authorities equipped with thermometers, Jewish community leaders were doing their best to remain in contact with their constituents. “We are not leaving,” Rabbi Dovi Henig, who with his wife, Sarale, co-directs Chabad of Chengdu, a six-hour train ride from Wuhan, wrote in a social-media post directed at his community. “We are open and continue to spread the light of joy and love to everyone, and are in contact with all staying in the area, ready to serve, help and assist.” Henig earlier reported that Chengdu—a city with about 150 Jewish residents out of a total population of nearly 15 million—was paralyzed like much of China with its streets emptied of trains and buses, and sporadically populated with people wearing protective masks. Jewish life, he said, was also disrupted as people were forced to deal with dwindling food supplies, restricted travel and growing fear. His usually robust Shabbat crowd this past Friday night was thinned down to nine people, he shared. “People are afraid to gather together,” he said, “afraid maybe someone will come who is infected.” […]
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