AP – This photo taken Aug. 10, 2009 shows an ultra-Orthodox Jew blowing a horn on a flight circling over Israel. …
(Yes, but it most emphatically is NOT a shofar – a ram’s horn! – msniw)
Tue Aug 11, 2:26 pm ET
JERUSALEM – A planeload of Israeli rabbis and Jewish mystics held an airborne prayer meeting in the belief that it could help check the spread of swine flu in Israel, an Israeli newspaper reported Tuesday.
The Yediot Ahronot daily said a plane with 50 people on board circled over Israel on Monday, with the passengers chanting prayers and sounding the ritual ram's horn.
The newspaper report carried a picture showing bearded and black-clad Orthodox Jewish men standing on the steps of an aircraft of Israeli short-haul airline Arkia. Airline officials could not be reached for comment.
"The purpose of the flight was to stop the (swine flu) epidemic so that people will not keeping dying from it," Rabbi Yitzhak Basri, one of the participants, told the newspaper.
Israel's Health Ministry has confirmed more than 2,000 cases of swine flu, with five fatalities in the country so far.
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Meanwhile, Alwayswriteagain’s own health correspondent has been privy to a ‘leak’ from Jewish sources in Manchester, U.K.
We can report, more or less exclusively, that after a long, closed session of the local Beth Din (Ecclesiastical Court), the following ruling was released:
- The condition, if named at all, must in future be referred to only as “Sw’ne ‘Flu”.
- It must never be mentioned in the presence of women.
- Women are forbidden from developing the disease.
- Men and women must now lead completely separate lives, bar women cooking, washing and cleaning for their husbands.
- Food and clean laundry must be passed over a mechitza – or dividing wall.
- While the pandemic continues, all rabbis who previously ate in public from the same dishes they deemed kosher for their congregants, must cease with immediate effect.
- Annual services for New Year and the fast day, Yom Kippur have been cancelled and re-arranged for Chanucah.
A spokesman said: “We hope to throw further light on this later in the year”.
msniw
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