Rabbi Shimon Freundlich, co-director of Chabad of Beijing said he had helped secure the evacuation of a Jewish mother and daughter from Palo Alto, California, who were visiting family for the Chinese New Year in Wuhan, which is where the virus has affected the most people.
Rabbi Freundlich said he was contacted about the family by Rabbi Yosef Levin of Chabad of Palo Alto, Calif, where the mother Esther Tebeka and her family are congregants.
He helped Mrs Tebeka and her 16-year-old daughter leave on a converted U.S. cargo plane bound for San Francisco with 228 others, including US government employees and officials stationed around China, on Tuesday.
The rabbi said he and his family were “vigilantly following health protocols calling for constant hand-washing, the avoidance of hand-shaking and the donning of what has become a scarce supply of face masks”.
He had also arranged for three girls who teach in a Beijing Jewish day school to return with 5,000 masks from their recent trip to Cambodia for the Chinese holiday as they were becoming harder to come by.
In Hong Kong and Shanghai, Chabad groups are leading a joint effort to establish a relief fund to assist Jewish communities around the country.
The organisation said its community leaders were doing their best to remain in contact with their constituents.
“We are not leaving,” Rabbi Dovi Henig, who was with his wife, Sarale, co-directs Chabad of Chengdu, which is a six-hour train ride from Wuhan.
In a social media post, Rabbi Henig said: “We are open and continue to spread the light of joy and love to everyone, and are in contact with all staying in the area, ready to serve, help and assist.”
Rabbi Henig said that the city of Chengdu, a city of nearly 15 million where around 150 Jewish live “was paralyzed like much of China with its streets emptied of trains and buses, and sporadically populated with people wearing protective masks.”
He said the outbreak had impacted on Jewish life in the city as people were facing dwindling food supplies, restricted travel and growing fear.
He said he had seen a fewer people attending his regular Friday night dinner.
“People are afraid to gather together. Afraid maybe someone will come who is infected,” he said.
In Ningbo, China, which is a three-hour drive north of Shanghai on China’s eastern coast, Rabbi Yekutiel Kalmenson said special efforts were being made to ensure the community had access to kosher products amid concerns around travel restrictions.
He said: “We are pleased to inform you that with the help of Hashem, we are all doing well, and the Jewish centre is—obviously with safety measures and precautions—still open and running.
“We made a special trip to Shanghai in order to stock up on kosher products.”
In Israel, a 32-year-old Chinese labourer was hospitalised and quarantined in Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon this week amid fears that he was suffering from coronavirus.
