this is actually from about 1788... not the tweet itself but the content of the tweet.. and today's tweet is actually a reminder of a tweet from last year... so here goes...

With the fast of 17 Tammuz fast approaching, in the middle of a pandemic, it raises the question of whether someone with CoronaVirus should fast or not on this upcoming fast day.

I have seen a number of piskei halacha announcements on this and they all seem pretty similar.

Chief Rabbi Rav Dovid Lau paskened that anyone sick with CoronaVirus or if one has symptoms of CoronaVirus (cough, difficulty breathing, weakness, etc), that person should not fast. If one has a temperature above 38C (100F) should not fast. Anyone eating because of CoronaVirus (even if he only suspects that he has it) should eat regularly and not bshiurim. Someone in isolation who feels fine, must fast.
source: Hamechadesh


Rav Yitzchak Zilbershtein paskened that anybody who has the CoronaVirus must eat on 17 Tammus. If someone is in isolation and thinks they might have cntracted the CoronaVirus, that person should eat "bshiurim" - in measured amounts of food less than a kzayit. If someone who suspects he might have Corona and is in isolation wants to fast anyway, he can only do so if he feels perfectly fine.
This goes for the upcoming Tisha B'Av fast as well.
source: Hamechadesh

Rav Moshe Bransdorfer paskened that one who has CoronaVirus or had it but still has weakness from it,  need not fast and if possible should make up the fast day later. Any other person should fast and not go out on the day, and if one must go out he should wear a mask. This is not like the fast of Erev Pesach that everyone was given a blanket psak to not fast - that was at the height of the pandemic and danger and now it is not at its full strength.

Rav Yosef Yitzchak Feigelstock, a Chabad rabbi in Buenos Aires, Argentina, paskened that anywhere that might still have CoronaVirus concerns, people should not fast on 17 Tammuz and 9 Av.

Anywhere there are sick people today, there is still danger. Because the doctors say that fasting makes one more prone to catching CoronaVirus, as the fasting weakens the body and the immune system, people in such places should not fast but should eat normally, without worrying about keeping the measurements down under the "shiurim" rule.

Someone who wants to fast anyway and is completely healthy - better to fast than to go to shul, so he should stay home all day..
source: Haredim10

We have seen new parents offering for sale the right to name their baby.

I think this might be a little bit stranger. Kikar is reporting on an advertisement in a newspaper (they don't say which) in which a person says he cannot fast on 17 Tammuz and therefore is looking to buy the right to be sandek at a bris. Being that a sandek would not have to fast, he is willing to pay up to $1000 for this right.



Supposedly they called him and he confirmed it, and added that he will only considering buying the sandek rights from a shabbos-observant family. I don't know what is wrong with being sandek at the bris of the baby of a non-shabbos-observant family, as such a sandek still would not fast and it would be the same "segula" and honor, but that is what he wants.

It is definitely a unique way of getting out of a fast, albeit expensive. He probably also figures it is worth spending a lot of money on as being sandek is  considered a segula for attaining wealth. He probably just figures he'll get his money back sooner or later.

Unless this is a 13 year old child fasting for the first time (or avoiding fasting), I wonder if he has done this before or if he has fasted before. And, what does he plan to do on Tisha B'av and Yom Kippur that are even longer fasts and this solution won't really help.

I was planning on barbecuing the food for dinner tonight - the food for breaking the fast of the 17th of Tammuz.

The barbecue was just going to be a method of cooking - not a celebratory meal like a birthday or graduation party.

Then I had this thought, that perhaps it is inappropriate. When people, especially Haredim, have gotten "caught" barbecueing on Memorial Day (Yom HaZikaron) or Holocaust Memorial Day (Yom HaShoah), society cries out in shock and rage that these people are so insensitive and are doing something fun and celebratory on such a sorrowful day. Perhaps, if society considers it inappropriate on those days, how much more so should it be considered inappropriate today.

Or maybe it is just another method of cooking. Maybe not turning it into a picnic or party makes it ok.

I did an informal and unscientific survey on Twitter, and respondents initially seem to think it is ok, though after then comparing it to Yom HaShoah and Yom HaZikaron BBQs, nobody really rebutted the comparison very well...

So, my informal survey continues here - what do you think about barbecueing the food for breaking the fast?

this Tuesday...

They say that if you are researching your genealogy - family tree - the trick is to find someone famous in your family. once you find someone famous, the rest is a piece of cake. Famous people usually have lots of documentation, and their histories are fairly well-known, so if you connect yourself to someone famous, you have made your work easier.

I have spent many years working on my family tree. I have had ups and downs, with long periods of time that I just could not continue, and periods where I spent way too much time working on it. In all that time, and I have been able to branch my family back to the mid1700s, I have yet to find anybody famous in my tree. That means I am always working for new information. Because of the Internet I have been able to find relatives I never knew existed. Now, they often send me information about branches and connections that I did not previously have or know about.

A recently discovered relative just sent to me a bucketload of information. A lot of it I had already, though I was able to use his info to correct some of my mistakes, and some of it was new.

Going through this information over the past few days was very striking. I also checked some of my old papers to compare and found similar patterns. There are so many names of children who died young -as babies just a few days or months old, as young children, etc. That along with the scores of names of people who died in the holocaust.

Coming across these names, and putting them into my online tree on geni.com, and correcting my other information, became very difficult, seeing all these people who died so young. I had seen this phenomenon before, but never really paid attention. Now that I am comparing the new info to my old info, I am noticing it more. It became very difficult to process too much information in each sitting. i had to stop working on it after short periods of time.

What is amazing is that the info I am working on is all from Germany. the premier country in culture and medicine and sciences. Not some backwater Eastern European shtetl. Yet even in Germany mortality rates were horrible.

The advances in medicine we have gone through in the last 60-70 years, and definitely the last 150 years, are absolutely amazing in the sense that it is not nearly as common now, people are living longer, it is not quite as common for children to die at such young ages.

I thought this appropriate to post today, being today is the 17th pf Tammuz - a day of fasting and introspection on the tragedies of the Jewish people, specifically the walls of Jerusalem being breached, the Torah being burnt, the luchos being shattered, among other tragedies throughout history - communities being destroyed, etc. Looking back over the past few days at all this information in my family tree, I see that there were tragedies occurring on a regular basis - families were losing children to sickness and disease fairly regularly. Seeing the regularity of it has shown me that it was a tragedy of massive proportions. Thank God we have improved in that, and hopefully will continue to improve.

I do not know where this clip comes from, but it seems appropriate for 17 Tammuz - except for the music. So watch this depiction of the Beis Hamikdash being overrun and destroyed, the events that began historically on 17 Tammuz, but keep your speakers turned off.