Leading rabbis and Torah scholars have instructed that people should not drink large amounts of alcohol during the Purim holiday, out of concerns of danger, Kikar Hashabbat reported.
In a letter, the rabbis wrote that "the situation of being drunk is very dangerous and indecent."
"During this difficult coronavirus pandemic, when alcohol is known to affect the drinker's brain and cause him to lose his clarity of thought, he may be caused to act without the required care and will not protect his health and safety, or keep the medical rules which are very much recommended by doctors, and by doing so he is liable to cause a rise in the number of infections, which harms and endangers the public health, and he will have to answer to others.
"Especially this year, when, G-d forbid, a person may end up desecrating the Shabbat (Sabbath), one should refrain from excessive drinking."
The letter was signed by council members Rabbi Yitzhak Zilberstein and Rabbi Shimon Ba'adani, as well as members of Bnei Brak's rabbinical court Rabbi Sariel Rosenberg and Rabbi Yehuda Silman.