Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on May 8, 2020

By Rabbi Avi Shafran

Among the most disturbing spectacles over the months since the coronavirus was unleashed on the world have been the attacks on haredi Jews in both Israel and the United States.

Some criticisms, like Mayor Bill de Blasios stern tweets following a funeral in Williamsburg, are not born of antipathy to the Orthodox community. His choice of words in rebuking the Jewish community was regrettable but his relationship with the community during his tenure has been very good.

Other critics, attacking the entire Orthodox world without justification, are less defensible. Those violating social distancing in the haredi world are outliers, no more representative of haredim writ large than those who crowded along the Hudson River to watch the Blue Angels and Thunderbirds a week ago on Sunday are of New Yorkers in general. Most of us have been staying home for months, doing our best to keep ourselves and others safe.

The initial haredi reluctance to close schools was a function not of defiance but of valuing what the Talmud calls the breath of the mouths of children in their places of learning on which the world depends. To an Orthodox Jew, childrens Torah study is spiritually vital, and only to be compromised when it is absolutely necessary.

But once the gravity of the situation was clear, the haredi reluctance to close schools quickly gave way to full compliance with medical advice. Once the virus virality was clearly established, haredi leaders not only shut down shuls and schools but pleaded with their flocks to heed every governmental health warning.

Unfortunately, none of that has stopped those given to disparaging traditionally religious Jews from doing so once again. One particularly distasteful attack on haredi leaders, and on Jewish religious tradition itself, appeared in the Jewish Journal.

On April 20, Rabbi Irving Yitz Greenberg, after duly expressing his great sympathy for haredi victims of the coronavirus, offered his explanation for why some haredi communities seem to have suffered disproportionately from the plague.

No, it wasnt because of the density of many haredi neighborhoods. Nor were the regular interactions born of religious events, celebrations and daily prayer services salient factors. And no, poverty and the challenge of confining large families in small apartments were not the main things to blame.

The true villains, in Rabbi Greenbergs judgment, are haredim and their leaders, a longtime bugaboo of his.

With superb hindsight, he reprises how some Hasidic leaders in 1930s Europe hadnt foreseen the Holocaust, and counseled their followers not to panic and flee the continent. Jewish religious leaders, Rabbi Greenberg contends, are viewed by haredim as infallible.

This is nonsense.

The reason Jewish religious leaders are respected is their sensitivity and Torah scholarship, and that is very different from blind obedience. A great doctor is fallible, too, but her opinion is still invaluable.

Blaming Jewish religious leaders, of course, has always been a popular pastime. What good are rabbis? the Talmud (Sanhedrin 99b) notes, was even in antiquity a common refrain of renegade Jews.

Even before Purim, when there were no regulations limiting human interactions or closing schools or businesses, the national haredi organization Agudath Israel, which Im privileged to work for, alerted the community to the potential danger of COVID-19. It was acting as always on the directives of the major rabbinic leaders comprising the Council of Torah Sages.

On March 13, Agudath Israel communicated health authorities new recommendation issued the previous day about social distancing and large gatherings.

Two days later it shared the strong recommendation from infectious disease specialists to severely limit all social or communal gatherings, including closing shuls and schools. And as soon as government regulations were in place, they were endorsed and publicized at the instruction of haredi leaders.

In Israel, when the governments Health Ministry banned even outdoor minyanim, one of the most respected religious leaders in that country, Rabbi Gershon Edelstein, dean of the famous Ponevezh Yeshiva, declared that under the circumstances, public prayer is a danger, impossible a sin.

Haredi couples and families celebrated Pesach in seclusion without other relatives present for many for the first time in decades.

Rabbi Greenberg ignores all that in his quest to vilify haredi leaders. Haredim, he mocks, firmly believe that as long as humans please G-d [He] will defeat their enemies.

Haredim like all believing Jews know that we are not perfect and cannot rely on our mitzvot and avoidance of sin alone to ensure our safety, that we must make efforts on our own behalf, too. Despite Rabbi Greenbergs insinuation, we do just that. At the same time, though, we recognize the merit of our spiritual actions, which Rabbi Greenberg, astoundingly for any rabbi, seems to discount.

He claims, without any evidence, that some Haredim allowed themselves to be exposed to the coronavirus because G-d would protect them.

Rabbi Greenberg might do well to consider some actual facts. Like the overwhelming haredi response to calls for plasma donations from survivors of the infection. Facilities in New York, Baltimore and Lakewood were flooded with thousands of haredi blood donors.

Blaming easily identifiable and, to some, strange haredim for various societal ills is easy. But doing so is not only contrary to everything our society was founded upon but wont help us get through this crisis any faster.

At a time like this, we should be unified in doing all we can to protect ourselves and others, not point fingers, especially at imaginary culprits.

See the rest here:

We've got problems. DeBlasio isn't one of them. - The Jewish Star

Category: Talmud
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