Weekly Highlights: Gantz: I had to join with Netanyahu * NY nurses saying Shema with patients * We ultra-Orthodox aren’t criminals’ * You can he lp find a corona test

[The Blogs]( [The Marketplace of Ideas]( Weekly Highlights Thursday, April 2, 2020 exclusive [I chose the only path possible at this time, a national emergency government]( By [Benny Gantz]( [I will never compromise on democracy or on the underlying principles of the more than one million Israelis who voted for Blue and White]( [Blimi Marcus]( [Nurses are stepping in to say Shema with the patients]( [Scenes from my day as a nurse on the frontlines of COVID-19 in New York: Asked to lay tefillin on a patient; downloading the Vidui prayer; crying]( [Navah Harlow]( [You need to discuss your end-of-life treatment choices now]( [All adults should make their advance medical directives known: Do it for yourself, and for health workers struggling with the pandemic’s agonizing load]( [Shmuel Ur]( [Help create a corona test that can be done over the phone]( [Voice forensics offer a path to detection, but voice samples are needed. That’s where you come in — especially if you tested positive for the virus]( [PHOTO ESSAY: Jerusalem in lockdown]( By [Ariel Jerozolimski]( [How that city sits, isolated, where it had been full of people]( [Menachem Bombach]( [I’m an ultra-Orthodox rabbi. We are not criminals.]( [The Haredi world views preserving human life as the most sacred value. We are being portrayed as despicable while facing tragedy]( [Coronavirus would be catastrophic for us in the Gaza Strip]( By [Olfat al-Kurd]( [I didn’t think the virus would make it into the sealed Gaza Strip. Now it has and I’m terrified: we have no capacity to protect our lives. Don’t forsake us]( [Jordana Klein]( [I am not my underlying medical condition]( [Attaching the ’elderly’ or ’preexisting illness’ label to coronavirus deaths helps many people feel safer — it terrifies me]( [Sally Berkovic]( [A digital geniza: Collecting COVID-19 ephemera]( [Flitting between the fragile present and the long corridor of Jewish memory, this time capsule will let us look back on how we responded to the virus]( [Benjamin Lau]( [Can Kaddish be said in a virtual minyan?]( [Guidelines to enable those who are reluctant to give up communal daily prayer to fulfill their prayer needs, by remote connection]( [Coronavirus and my husband’s shoelaces]( By [Diana Bletter]( [In this crisis, my outlook has shrunk from global to local: More than ever, I’m relieved I moved to Israel, a place I feel cared for and wanted]( Top Ops [Naomi Chazan]( [Think we’ve got a working government now? Guess again]( [The rule of law and the norms of governance have been all but unraveled — we’re looking at a multi-system failure of Israeli democracy]( [Ofer Kenig]( [A jumbo-size government? Now? Really?]( [Reports of a 30- to 34-minister cabinet in the works beg for a public outcry: Costly, inefficient and divisive is not what we need today]( [Ethan Eisen]( [For Passover and beyond, Israel needs a ’Loneliness Czar’]( [The social disconnection that will be felt so acutely during the upcoming holiday, will continue to impact our society for months to come]( [David Harris]( [Virulant conspiracies]( [It was just a matter of time before anti-Semites applied their twisted, hate-filled logi to the pandemic. Vigilance is paramount]( [Unsubscribe from this List]( © 2020 THE TIMES OF ISRAEL, All Rights Reserved