"The mainstream understands the danger. But sadly there are a few ‘heroes’ who refuse to obey the call of gedolim to follow regulations, with grave results”
Yuli Edelstein took the helm of Israel’s Health Ministry in May 2020, just as the first wave of coronavirus was ebbing. He stepped into the role after resigning as Knesset speaker, a position he’d held for seven years. He is used to fighting impossible battles; before grappling with a global pandemic or chairing the plenum in Israel’s unruly parliament, he was one of the most prominent Jewish refuseniks in the Soviet Union.
In the middle of Israel’s third wave, he sat down with Mishpacha and faced some tough questions about the country’s pandemic prognosis, and offered some predictions about the political arena as the party lists closed for the fourth elections in two years.
He is not one to offer platitudes, as was clear in a recent speech he delivered in the Knesset about the hoped-for victory against corona.
“One final effort? That’s not where the situation is,” he said, warning against deceptive promises of a swift end to the crisis. “There’s a feeling in the air that ‘one final effort and it’s behind us.’ It has to be said honestly — we’ll be living in the shadow of the coronavirus for a long time. I haven’t learned to lie even in politics, and I’m not going to tell you ‘in a month everything will reopen and life will go back to normal.’ We’ll have to be very cautious in exiting this lockdown.”
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