A New Halachic Era

“Come up with contingency plans and modify the Pesach preparations to a bare minimum. This Pesach, you’re going to be machmir on pikuach nefesh”

But leading the Torah-observant homefront are the community’s rabbanim. The questions that have poured into the phones and emails of rabbanim, says Rav Moshe Tuvia Lieff, the rav of Agudas Yisroel Bais Binyomin in Flatbush, are unlike any other he recalls in his decades of rabbanus.

So are the psakim. No minyanim, not even on porches or in backyards. No physically taking care of elderly parents. Cleaning for Pesach? Just the bare minimum.

Rav Lieff, formerly a rav in Minneapolis, said that he and other rabbanim have radically changed their lives over the past few weeks. He makes a point of calling each member of his kehillah every few days. He was mesader kedushin at a chasunah that had twenty people, “and that’s including the photographer, caterer and musicians,” wearing a face mask. And they are dealing with a heartbreaking new array of halachic queries.