Koby Peretz on the Coronavirus: "When Will We Stop Idle Talk in the Synagogue? It Breaks My Heart."

He has been performing for almost 26 years, but since the outbreak of corona and the associated lockdown - singer Koby Peretz has suffered financial losses amounting to thousands of shekels, due to the cancellation of 40 performances.

And it seems that despite the substantial financial loss, something else is weighing on Peretz's heart these days. In a particularly charged post that the singer shared on social media, he calls on everyone reading the post "to do some soul-searching."

"I sit and ponder why Hashem has sent us out of the synagogue. I am not speaking about corona at all, for all of the ways of Hashem are measure for measure. Why are we ashamed and embarrassed as we are sent outside? Initially, it was to pray two meters apart, then to pray with only 10 people, then to pray outside, and now it’s to pray each man in his own home."

"The Gemara asks, 'Why was the land lost?' For abandoning My Torah. I am not coming to judge, Heaven forbid, the people of Israel, but to awaken a little. We come to the synagogue with a phone on the side, with a phone on vibrate. We sit in front of the rabbi during Torah lessons and are engrossed in our phones."

"Corona is the way the Creator of the World is shaking up the whole world"

"We’ve become accustomed, and that is the great danger. Sometimes I see the wardens fighting it, and some have already given up and gotten used to it. When will we stop idle talk in the synagogue? It breaks my heart. Mundane conversations? Politics? Corona? Nonsense? It is forbidden to talk in the synagogue."

At this point, Peretz cited sources - the Magen Avraham, the Shulchan Aruch, the Mishnah Berurah, and the Rokeach, and added that "the Ari, of blessed memory, was very careful not to talk in the synagogue, only words of prayer. And even words of ethics he did not speak, lest they lead to mundane conversation."

In an interview with Channel N12, when asked "what did you mean by this post," Peretz replied that he "frequently attends prayers in the synagogue, and more than once I found myself in the middle of prayer with the phone. I told myself: 'Koby, I commit from now on that when I pray or put on tefillin, I will take my phone and put it on silent. Put it aside. In prayer, it is a kind of house of Hashem, and I need to focus only on prayer. We take things for granted, and that's the worst."

He further added that corona is the way of the Creator of the world to shake up the whole world, so that "no one should think that if they have a little more, a little less, they have airplanes, houses, wealth - no matter how much money - in the end, no one is immune to this pandemic. We must know that all of us here need to truly be in unity and love, because unconditional love is the most important thing. To be together. For me, and not just, it is a great sign from Hashem."