When the Haredim met Humpty Dumpty

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty together again.

By Rabbi Dr. Michael Leo Samuel

Rabbi Dr. Michael Leo Samuel

CHULA VISTA, California — Israel is a remarkable place; the people who inhabit the country are an endless array of unique personalities. The religious parties governed by the Haredi community have long adopted a strident attitude toward modernity and science.

To the Haredi community’s immense credit, after the Holocaust its spiritual leaders managed to establish one of the most pious and learned Judaic communities in many centuries, if not millennia. Its birth rate is the highest in Israel, and they have always considered themselves apart from everyone else. Thus far, their model seemed to work.

But did it?

The March 26 edition of The Jerusalem Post  featured an article about the Health Minister Yaakov Litzman, who tested positive for coronavirus. Apparently, he did not obey the guidelines as defined by his ministry before contracting the illness.  Unfortunately, Prime Minister Benjamin supported Litzman’s desire that enforcement of harsher guidelines in the ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods be delayed by a week.

In Bnei B’rak, one Israel’s oldest cities since early rabbinical times, the coronavirus has spread exponentially more than it has in the rest of the country. And the epicenter of problem: the synagogue. The centers of Haredi piety in Israel are not alone; In Europe, cities like Antwerp, Belgium; London; Strasbourg, France; as well as in Borough Park, N.Y., the coronavirus pandemic has produced an unusually high number of deaths of Haredim living in the Diaspora.

Although Haredim, also known as ultra-Orthodox, make up only 12 percent of Israel’s population, the Haredim account for 40 to 60 percent of the coronavirus patients at four major hospitals, hospital officials told Israeli news media. The true dimensions of the epidemic among the Haredim can only be estimated because testing is rare. All of this has occurred under Rabbi Litzman’s watch. And to make the situation even worse, he himself contracted the virus. All of this could have been avoided, had he committed to the same rules of social-distancing he was supposed to have recommended to his communities.[1]

Normally, the Haredim can always point to the Israeli secular state for being at the root cause of their social problems, but this time the average Haredi Jew knows that the problem here is not the secular Other, but the way of life they have long embraced. In their effort to create a Jewish ghetto to protect themselves from the problems of the outer community, the pandemic has shaken the confidence of their followers in their rabbis, whom they had believed were incapable of making errors. The Israeli writer David Landau calls it, “the logic of implied infallibility.”

And yes, Catholics are not the only ones who believe the Pope is infallible (except for Hans Kung, who later got excommunicated from the Church for contesting this doctrine), the Haredi rabbis have a similar status in their communities as well. To their followers, the rabbis have almost a rock-star status; they appear larger than real life.

Among the Haredi followers, their rabbis prohibit their followers from watching television, listening to radio, or reading newspapers. Even the use of Internet on their Android or Apple phones is discouraged—this absence of communication prevents their communities from ascertaining the problem of a pandemic.

It is interesting to contrast the Haredim with the Amish, another religious community that keeps its distance from modernity. But unlike the Haredim, once the Amish were informed about COVID-19, the leaders of their community quickly disseminated the information to the rest of the Amish community. To their credit, they have cancelled large gatherings, weddings and services.[1]

But the Haredi communities’ isolation is compounded by the population density of their cities. The largest city is Bnei Brak, which is packed with over 27,000 residents on average per one square kilometer. It is hardly any wonder why the ultra-Orthodox community has emerged as the nation’s most vulnerable community.

Since the founding of the State, the Haredim believed it is their study of Torah and prayers, rather than soldiers’ maneuvers in the field, that provide the last line of defense for the Jewish people. But the pandemic has laid this belief bare; for all the Torah study they have done, it is powerless against a virus that is indifferent to their religious piety and fear of Heaven. Since their teachers instilled in them the belief that Torah is the best medicine, and that the Torah protects and saves—now they tangibly see that “this is not so at all.”

To use the Humpty Dumpty nursery rhyme as an analogy, the Haredi community can now see the collapse of a religious world-view they never thought would possibly fall. It is difficult to imagine how they are going to put their communities back together again. Their leaders’ hubris produced the suffering their families must now endure.

The Haredi journey toward modernity was actually well underway before the pandemic occurred. Despite protestations from their spiritual leaders, the Haredi communities had already crossed the Rubicon. Not long ago, the share of Haredim connected to the web crossed the 50% mark. After this crisis is over, one can almost guarantee the Haredim will fully embrace the Internet—and when this happens, their insular community will begin to waver as its people begin to clamor for  genuine social and religious change.

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NOTES

[2] https://www.the-daily-record.com/news/20200320/amish-taking-coronavirus-seriously-health-officials-say

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Rabbi Dr. Michael Leo Samuel is spiritual leader of Temple Beth Shalom in Chula Vista.  He may be contacted via michael.samuel@sdjewishworld.com