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Jan. 18, 2021
The cries at the funeral Sunday in Elad filled the air as Shmuel Yodlovich eulogized his wife, Tzipi, a 40-year-old woman with no underlying conditions who died over Shabbat after contracting the coronavirus. “When we were singing ‘A Woman of Valor’ [on Friday night] the angels were leading you to heaven,” he is heard saying on a recording of the eulogy that was circulated.
Similar eulogies have been heard over the past several weeks at cemeteries in many ultra-Orthodox communities. The rate of infection in the Haredi community during the current wave of the pandemic is breaking records. The bulletin boards in Haredi neighborhoods in Jerusalem are seeing death notices pasted over each other daily and the mourning pages on Haredi websites are being updated at a dizzying pace. Many members of the community are hospitalized in serious condition.