Singing and chanting in shul is banned

amother

Mint

Fri, Jul 03 2020, 5:55 pm

RuralIma wrote:

That makes sense. Northern California and I think most of the Bay Area is still closed. But I haven't talked to anyone in the Bay Area recently so I could be wrong.

Our Bay Area shul is opening now for outdoor minyan with masks & distancing, in keeping with the OU’s guidance to wait until 2 weeks after it was legally allowed. Our leadership had said that singing / chanting would be minimized long before Newsom because it is known to spread the virus.

We like to be machmir on pikuach nefesh here. Other people putting themselves in danger by protesting doesn’t change that.

amother

Cerulean

Fri, Jul 03 2020, 7:02 pm

amother [ Mint ] wrote:

I'm in San Jose. We opened the first day that the county permitted, outdoors, with strictly enforced masks and distancing. For the life of me, I can't understand why people on this board are perpetually surprised by frum Jews following government policy, and medical guidance.

amother

Mint

Fri, Jul 03 2020, 7:22 pm

amother [ Cerulean ] wrote:

At the rate things are going, I'll be thankful if my kids and I iyH hear shofar on Rosh Hashanah.

Yeah, I’m wondering what’s going to happen for high holy days too. No way they’re going to be packing people inside like usual. I’m hoping for shifts of outdoor shofar blowing so my husband and I can trade off. I don’t know when kids are going to be permitted again though...

amother

Cerulean

Fri, Jul 03 2020, 7:40 pm

amother [ Mint ] wrote:

Same. I'm hoping all my kids get to iyH hear shofar, but I strongly suspect it's just going to be the ones who are 12+, if even that... they are predicting a surge in San Jose in two weeks, so God only knows.... 😭

ora_43

Sat, Jul 04 2020, 1:57 pm

imorethanamother wrote:

Why do you assume that banning protests are problematic? You know you usually have to get permits to organize protest at public locations? Those were given out freely. No one insisted they protest via zoom, to exercise their freedom of assembly, which is what they told religious people to do to exercise their freedom of religion. Why is one okay and the other not okay?

It's problematic because it would contradict explicit constitutional law.

You usually have to get permits, but city officials are limited in terms of when they can refuse to give permits.

Know Your Rights: Demonstrations and Protests

Like I said, I do think that more restrictions could have been put in place to force protests to keep some kind of social distancing. It's only banning them completely, or restricting them to the point where they wouldn't reach their audience (eg Zoom-based protests wouldn't really be protests at all), that would be a legal problem.

At some point, restrictions on religious practice would violate the Constitution at well. I'm not arguing against that. All I'm saying is that I doubt that telling people not to sing, specifically, is problematic at the current time. But I might be wrong.

(And whether or not it's right for the state to ban singing, it would be smart for individual shuls to avoid it for a while)

amother

Lemon

Sat, Jul 04 2020, 6:53 pm

This is 100% reasonable. You realize that singing and chanting in religious institutions has led to more superspreading than anywhere else (including nursing homes) so yeah its reasonable. Rules like this will prevent us from needing to lock down. And again outdoors presents an extremely low risk. High risk is indoor areas without masks especially with singing, yelling and chanting.