When no one else in Israel could be found willing to take the risk, Zaka volunteers stepped up to the plate and tended to the body of an Israeli man who passed away while in quarantine for COVID-19 on Monday.
The body of the 50-year-old Netanya resident, who recently returned from France and passed away while in self-quarantine, lay on the floor for hours as authorities tried to find someone willing to perform the true chessed shel emes. As midnight approached, Health Ministry Director-General Moshe Bar Siman-Tov turned to ZAKA chairman Yehuda Meshi-Zahav and requested his help.
A select staff of volunteers took the sacred mission onto themselves. After receiving a medical briefing and donning protective clothing, forged with mesiras nefesh and emunah, they tended to the meis in the room he had been quarantined in. They wrapped the body in several bags and evacuated it to the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute in Tel Aviv.
The ZAKA ambulance was then thoroughly disinfected but this final step proved unnecessary. The tests carried out at Abu Kabir showed that the meis was not infected with the coronavirus, and had apparently passed away from a heart attack.
(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
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7 Responses
And this is the type of headline that annoys me so much. Why couldn’t you put somewhere in the headline man dies of heart attack after being in quarantine. No instead you need to give people anxiety with writing your sensational headline to get clicks.
Great job YWN now you’re just like the regular media that has ruined people’s Menuchas Henfesh with your constant need to make people terrified.
PS – The ZAKA people are amazing and my comment has nothing to do with them. BDE to the man that passed away.
and had apparently passed away from a heart attack caused by loneliness from the quarantine.
Meanwhile:- How are deceased people flying to Israel for burial being handled? and how about their mourning family escorting deceased body?
Hashem should bless them with should bless them with a long and healthy life.
Amazing people!!!
There have been zero deaths from coronavirus in Israel, Baruch Hashem.
https://ncov2019.live/data?fbclid=IwAR0w0YcQwkECuQU8G2fVxKOQHbs4KxW9ILnFLWKecFDE2Yq8qLKsYZ38ka4
This situation seems terribly wrong. The odds of this man having had coronavirus was not very likely.
Unfortunately, this virus is causing a big drop in mitzvos bein adam l’chaveiro and also bein adam l’Makom.
I think we need to have more bitachon in Hashem that when we are doing mitzvos Hashem will protect us.
In 2017 an estimated 295,000 women died from complications in pregnancy and childbirth. Would we tell women to limit the amount of babies they have because of this statistic? Or, instead, as G-d fearing Jews do we have bitachon that everything will be ok, b’ezras Hashem?
ZAKA is a wonderful organization. The things they do and the lengths they go to for all Yidden, alive or not, is unparalleled.
Gold, regardless of the numbers and statistics, we follow the direction of the Gedolim. Your example of childbirth statistics has been asked and answered in the poskim many times, and we hold that despite stats, there is a special siyata d’shmaya for childbirth. Not so, by the way, for pre-planned C-section births, where that special siyata dishmaya is withheld and the statistics in fact do lead to a prohibition of that practice