Board of Deputies President Marie van der Zyl is calling on all those who have yet to be vaccinated or have not taken up the offer of a booster dose to do so in order to support their family, community and society as a whole.
Marie said: “Coronavirus has affected so many of us. We have lost more than 900 of our community to the pandemic, and our synagogues are yet to return to the full life we knew before March 2020. Certainly, many of our friends and family who were avid shulgoers are nervous to return.
“We still have a long way to go to defeat this pandemic. But for the safety of yourself, your loved ones, and so that we can fully revive our communal life as soon as possible, I urge those who are eligible for a booster to take one, and those who are yet to take the two original jabs to do so as soon as possible. We all need to take responsibility for overcoming Coronavirus together.”
Working with the Jewish community’s burial boards, regional Jewish communities and the Jewish Small Communities Network as of the week ending 122nd October 2021 there have been 937 Jewish funerals carried out where the deceased contracted Covid-19. This represents an increase of 3 reported funerals on the previous week.
We wish bereaved families a long life, and pray that the memory of their loved ones should be for a blessing.
The Board of Deputies is liaising with seven of the largest denominational burial boards to collate an indicator of deaths where Covid-19 was a factor. These denominational burial boards are: The Adath Yisroel Burial Society, the Federation of Synagogues Burial Society, the Joint Jewish Burial Board, Liberal Judaism, the Spanish and Portuguese Sephardi Community, the United Synagogue Burial Society and the Western Charitable Foundation. The Board of Deputies has either received reports from the following regional communities, or has accounted for them through the largest denominational burial boards where they cover that particular community: Aberdeen, Belfast, Birmingham, Bognor Regis, Bournemouth, Brighton and Hove, Canvey Island, Chelmsford, Cheltenham, Cornwall, Darlington, Eastbourne, Edinburgh, Exeter, Gateshead, Glasgow, Hull, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, Manchester, Milton Keynes, Norwich, Nottingham, Oxford, Peterborough, Portsmouth, Solihull, Southend, Southport, St Annes, Stoke on Trent and Swansea. The indicator enumerates how many funerals were carried out by these burial societies and communities where COVID-19 appeared on the death certificate of the deceased. As such it covers both deaths in hospitals and in the wider community. When making comparisons of data, please note that data separate to this indicator may not have similar parameters. Please do not take successive figures as indicative of exact trend as smaller communities cannot report weekly.