https://www.nysun.com/editorials/rabbi-yaakov-perlow/91084/
The death today of the Novominsker rebbe, Rabbi Yaakov Perlow, will lend a sad note to the Passover seders of tens of thousands families the world over. The rabbi, a towering figure in the world of Torah Judaism, was carried off from his home in Brooklyn by the coronavirus. He perished at 89, two weeks after issuing an important warning to Jews that religious law required them to heed medical doctors during the pandemic.
We did not know Rabbi Perlow personally, though we’d once met him briefly at the offices of the Agudath Israel of America. We admired him enormously for setting a standard to which fervently orthodox Jews could repair. The Aguda is the largest grassroots organization of fervently religious Jews. Rabbi Perlow had been its president since 1998 and also chaired its Council of Torah Sages.
The Novominsker dynasty that Perlow headed was founded in Poland by his grandfather and later headed by his father, whom Perlow succeeded. In 2015, at the Aguda’s annual banquet at the Hilton in New York, Rabbi Perlow surprised attendees by suddenly declaring he felt “compelled to address the president of this great country,” meaning President Obama. Yeshiva World reported that a “deafening silence” came over the hall.