Police shut down a Montreal Yom Kippur ceremony due to COVID-19 rules | Berel Solomon tells Ezra

By Rebel News
|
October 04, 2020

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Police in Montreal last week enforced COVID-19 restrictions on a Montreal synagogue amid ongoing ceremonies to celebrate the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, the highest holy day in the religion. The region was under restrictions limiting social gatherings to 25, although certain businesses were allowed to have a higher capacity.

Officers entered the Chabad House without a warrant and forced the cessation of the event near its conclusion.

On a recent episode of The Ezra Levant Show, Ezra was joined by a member of the Chabad House, Berel Solomon, made a recording of the event, and joined Ezra to discuss what had occurred. Berel discussed the selective enforcement by police, and the problems this creates with a public that is trying its best to follow constantly-changing rules and restrictions:

[The rules are] up for interpretation, and we're living in crazy times. I think that everybody is trying to do their best, But this is where doing your best begins becoming problematic. The day before, the police had showed up, they said we were respecting all of our duties, everything that we had to do.

The next day another new police officer showed up and said that we were not, and therefore everybody had to vacate the premise during the highest part of the day, which is called Neilha, during Yom Kippur.

It's the highest prayer of the day, it's really the crescendo of the whole prayer service, and the rabbi had asked the police officer if we could have about 20 more minutes to finish up.

He said, “you have 10 and everybody has to get out of the building.” The police officers stood there in their car and they were telling everybody go home, go home, go home. They were causing people to leave and it just created a mass panic for absolutely no reason.

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