Q&A: An explanation for Haredi behavior during the coronavirus!!!!
An explanation for Haredi behavior during the coronavirus!!!!
Question
I study in a Lithuanian Haredi yeshiva that is considered one of the top yeshivas in the Haredi public, and I want to respond to what the Rabbi wrote.
The point that hurts the most: in the Haredi public, even though they trained us to attack ideas and ask questions in learning, for some reason at a certain stage our minds just stop working.
As the Rabbi wrote, this didn’t begin with the coronavirus: you can count on one hand the people from within the Haredi public who examined faith in God and the truth of the Torah objectively. The rage I feel over this enormous stupidity is immense, and it pains me every day. When I, who demands evidence, am considered someone who has “problems” with faith.
Almost all the yeshivas opened in capsules irresponsibly, while endangering human life: you have no idea how upset the boys in yeshiva and the parents were, how angry they were, and how they cursed our yeshiva heads for behaving like murderers.
In our yeshiva personally there is a serious crisis between the boys and the staff. And I personally am sick with coronavirus in a hotel packed with yeshiva boys. All the boys in the hotel told me they didn’t keep the rules. Nobody should dare say this was just a small group or a minority; that’s the atmosphere in the Haredi public, and aside from three yeshivas, not a single yeshiva did the capsules properly!!!!
I want to try to describe to you the great confusion we were in when Rabbi Kanievsky announced that studies should continue and the famous video was published: all the boys were in conflict. On the one hand, logic was screaming that there was no logic here, and on the other hand I want to explain why all the boys and married kollel students still listen to Rabbi Kanievsky:
Rabbi Dessler in Michtav MeEliyahu, part 1, page 75, deals with exactly this issue, when people attacked the decisions and behavior of the great sages of Israel during the Holocaust:
Rabbi Dessler brings an example from the Scroll of Esther:
As is known, the Jewish people went to Ahasuerus’s feast, something that seemingly had no problem in it, and on the contrary it brought hearts closer and did good.
Mordechai, by contrast, provoked Haman and refused to bow, with no logic at all, and when Haman announced that Mordechai was angering him and therefore he wanted to kill all the Jews, that still did not stop Mordechai.
And when Jews came to Mordechai and shouted at him, “Look what you’ve done!” Mordechai’s response was bizarre:
He explained to the Jews, illogically, that that banquet from 9 years earlier was what caused the terrible decree, even though in reality that feast seems only to have created closeness, while Mordechai was the one who provoked Haman for no reason—and after all Haman explicitly said that he wanted to destroy everyone because Mordechai wouldn’t bow to him????
Rabbi Dessler continues: and what does Mordechai answer the Jews? We would expect him to regret it and ask forgiveness, but no—Mordechai knows that the world is more complicated than it appears to us, and whoever reads the Megillah will see that the Jews accepted Mordechai’s words, and repented, and the result was that the decree passed and the Jews rejoiced.
Rabbi Michael Abraham, I appreciate you and know you very, very well:
You can say that you disagree with Rabbi Dessler—that is your right! And you can also come with claims against all the yeshiva heads, who disregarded the rules like donkeys. You can also come with claims against Rabbi Kanievsky. (If you have the courage.)
But you cannot come with claims against people who were educated and raised on Rabbi Dessler and on another million tannaim, amoraim, medieval authorities, and later authorities who say exactly what Rabbi Dessler says:
To grit your teeth and, even when the rabbis go against reality, to listen to them.
There is a verse in Proverbs: “A king’s lips are like magic in judgment; his mouth does not betray him.” And that is what most of the Haredi public does: believes because rabbis told him to—and not just rabbis, but great people throughout all of history. The rabbi does not betray with his lips, and if he made a mistake, that is God’s will, and it is God’s will that we make the mistake.
You can disagree with that. But now the Haredi public looks a little less sealed-off and obtuse.
With great love, from a young man who hates and loves the Haredi public, in the name of many other Haredi people!
I’d be happy to know your opinion regarding what I brought from Rabbi Dessler. Thank you.
Answer
I do indeed disagree with Rabbi Dessler. In my view this is utter nonsense. Moreover, one absolutely can make claims against a public that was educated foolishly for not checking and choosing its own path. By your method, you cannot make claims against ISIS people, because they were educated that this is what God demands of them. And you cannot make claims against anyone if some wise man told him something. I disagree with that itself. My criticism is directed precisely at the infantilism (= childishness) that you described here. Adults are responsible for their actions, and none of them is exempt from responsibility because the rabbi told him so. That’s fine for a three-year-old child, not for an adult. And indeed, this is a very childish and foolish public (as a public. There can be people in it with very high intelligence in Torah learning, for example. See the last column in this context).
I’m surprised that you present such nonsense as a defense argument. That itself is exactly what I criticize in the Haredim.
Discussion on Answer
With God’s help, 25 Tammuz 5780
Rabbi Kanievsky and Rabbi Edelstein instructed at the time (in Adar) to continue studying in the yeshivas in “capsules” of ten each, while making sure of ventilation and sending the sick home.
Broadly speaking, this is the outline approved by the Ministry of Health in Iyar, except that they were lenient and allowed 30 in a “capsule,” and the great rabbis, Rabbi Kanievsky and Rabbi Edelstein, instruct and repeatedly insist without letup to keep the Health Ministry guidelines.
So I do not understand: people deviate from the instructions of the great rabbis and “get hit,” and then come with complaints against the great ones whose instructions they violated?
Regards, The Crooked One’s Shaving Machine
I explained everything. If you insist on not understanding, that is of course your right.
To “They didn’t obey the instructions of the rabbis,”
I didn’t understand exactly what you said because you didn’t write clearly, but I was inside the yeshivas,
and the ones who were dismissive were the yeshiva heads. There were almost no dismissive students, and even if some students were dismissive, that was obviously after they saw their rabbis setting them that example. Don’t lie. Nobody listened to the rules. I was in a capsule with 100 boys without masks, and they were hugging there all day.
Beit Mattityahu and Belz gave instructions not to get tested, on the instructions of the Belz Rebbe, and Rabbi Mattityahu Weisberg,
one of the leading yeshiva heads.
Rabbi Kanievsky told Rabbi Eliezer Finkel, head of Mir Yeshiva, to go without masks in the study hall.
Mir numbers about 5,000 people.
So please check the facts.
With God’s help, 28 Tammuz 5780
To Elchanan — greetings,
I brought extensive material about the instructions of the sages of the generation from the various sectors regarding the obligation of caution in my comments on the column “Coping with the Coronavirus — A Systemic Perspective,” on this site. In the comment “…in the tents of the righteous” and near it. See there.
I will note here additional material:
In the article “The great ones of Israel in a special letter: these are the things in which one must strengthen oneself” (dated 20 Adar), it says among other things: “…And in every place, danger is treated more seriously than prohibition, and all of us must make great efforts in all matters that require caution. For example, to divide the learners and leave space between one group and another. Also to make sure that the study rooms and study halls are properly ventilated, and to appoint supervisors who will maintain the cleanliness required by health necessity. And anyone who has even a double doubt of illness, whether in himself or in his family, and even if he merely requires isolation according to the guidelines—should keep himself away from the study hall and not become liable to others. And all this is by way of a condition prior to action. And the yeshiva heads and the administrators of the Torah schools shall stand watch.”
And see also the article “Our master, the Prince of Torah, and the Rosh Yeshiva: ‘Danger is treated more seriously than prohibition’ — one must be careful about the health rules” (Channel 2000, dated 8 Tammuz).
With wishes for physical and spiritual health,
Shatz Levinger
But explain why you disagree with Rabbi Dessler:
After all, this is exactly our claim—why do we go like blind people after Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky!
Rabbi Dessler is making a good argument, after all: the Megillah ended well thanks to Mordechai.
And yes, I really don’t blame ISIS, because they are brainwashed and their ability to choose is very limited.
I personally cause my father a lot of pain and argue with him like crazy. It’s not fun. Why would a Haredi person want that?
Why would a person think differently when there is such a campaign of intimidation, and more than that: when he claims that the rabbis are acting without logic, they tell him this is a test from the Holy One, blessed be He, and they bring Rabbi Dessler.
So what do you want from him?