Q&A: Your opinion about sectors and the coronavirus
Your opinion about sectors and the coronavirus
Question
With God's help,
Hello Rabbi,
I wanted to ask your opinion regarding belonging to certain sectors in light of their behavior during the coronavirus, even though this question itself may involve a desecration of God's name if some people read it. Still, I hope it will not cause a desecration of God's name or anything of that sort.
The message is a bit tiring, so I understand if you don’t answer. Just delete it. It’s important to me to hear your opinion on the matter.
It seems obvious to me that the coronavirus is not dangerous to young people, and therefore it seems to me that there are certain sectors that decided that sanctifying communal life and the concern for preserving the “strict” religious character of all members of the community is more severe than danger to life for the rest of the public in the country, and also more severe than the broader harm to the rest of the country/citizens. So it seems to me that from their perspective, anyone who is not under that same community can basically go to hell, and in general it is likely that the hospitals—where of course almost none of the members of that community work—will be able to treat the few who get sick within the community, so the internal communal danger-to-life issue seems negligible.
P.S. On a personal level I’m not really an expert, but I think that according to their approach one can expand the question even more, because I think it may even be that those sectors could perhaps develop herd immunity without much harm to the elderly, since the ratio of young people to old people in the community is quite high because of large families and so on. And if so, one could strengthen the claim and argue that from their perspective continuing their regular way of life would hardly cause any internal effect at all.
In other words, it seems to me that they are willing to sacrifice the interests of the general public (both medically and economically) for the sake of narrower interests. After all, reaching about a thousand seriously ill patients nationwide is really very easy without precautions, so it seems to me that if such a large public does not follow the guidelines at the public, general level, that can probably cause this indirectly or even directly.
According to their view, I assume they would argue in three different directions –
- Spiritual danger to life takes precedence, and every yeshiva boy who deteriorates from lounging on the sofa at home with the internet or goes out to work, Heaven forbid—and if there is concern that an entire public of thousands of yeshiva students and teenagers will deteriorate spiritually, that is far worse than a few who may die indirectly. I heard this concern secondhand from an important yeshiva head who is very afraid this is what will happen to his students, and therefore he opened the yeshiva, not even according to the capsule framework, just to keep the hundreds of students away from the outside world.
- The integrity of the community is much more important than the other harms to the economy, and maybe even more than other things… Also, in some communities, communal life is almost like an oxygen balloon for the members of the community, so cutting it off could cause serious difficulties for some of its members.
- The secular people also don’t keep the rules (see the protests at Balfour), so if they are allowed to bluff, then we are allowed too. [Though here it feels a bit different to me, because among the secular there isn’t really some actual left-wing group representation dragging the protests along; it’s more an act of individuals, especially since it’s quite a negligible public compared to the secular public as a whole. And in general, if some of them don’t keep the rules, does that mean we’re allowed to completely disregard them?].
In addition, it seems clear to me that quite a few of the sector’s representatives do not always say the things that would maximize the gain for the public as a whole (even at not very high cost to their own public), but rather it feels to me that they make populist statements that will sound good to voters—even regarding things that are completely foolish.
A. So first I would be glad to hear whether you indeed think that public spiritual danger to life (and I would be glad to know at what levels we are talking—whether a significant public would stop being kollel scholars? some would deteriorate and become lenient in rabbinic laws? some would commit Torah prohibitions? take off their kippah? become heretics? etc.) in the face of a virus—I’m not sure this is talking about a time of religious persecution by gentile heretics, or perhaps the secular state turns it into such a time of persecution—is more important than considerations of danger to life for broad segments of the general population. Also, I would be glad to hear what the relation is between that and severe economic harm, for example many unemployed people and so on, which would lead to a serious increase in the state deficit and indirectly require the rest of the public to fund the damages created by them, etc.
B. Even if it is more important, if fairly broad parts of the public in Israel are willing to pay the economic-social price because of the danger to life, can that public on its own ruin the decision for everyone else? And here it is important to remember that from that public’s own point of view, its price may be the deep destruction of that public. So there is room to say that it can refuse.
C. Second, I would be glad to hear whether you think that the consideration of desecration of God's name in the eyes of secular people can be some factor in refraining from these acts.
D. Also, I would be glad to hear whether you think that following these events it is reasonable to reconsider continuing to define oneself as belonging to those sectors. Indirectly that of course means “moving” to another sector that is less safe religiously, but seems at least overall to preserve many more values, etc. (Hardal / Religious Zionist / religious).
Thank you very much!
Answer
I largely agree with the analysis, but one should add to it their lack of trust in the very existence of the harm and in the instructions. Obedience to the law is not a value there, and trust in institutions is very limited. This is in addition to a disproportionate glorification of the values of community and Haredi identity. All this was discussed in columns 305, 290, 292.
A. I definitely think this is an outrageous decision by a primitive public that is shut up within its own four cubits and does not understand the world in which it lives. I wrote this in my columns on the subject. Its leaders have quite a bit of blood on their hands during the coronavirus period.
B. See my above-mentioned columns.
C. Definitely yes. Though it is not decisive, because one does not desecrate the Sabbath because of desecration of God's name. Therefore this question cannot be detached from the previous ones.
D. I am completely in favor of leaving the Haredi sector for many reasons. I think it is run in a foolish way by a disconnected leadership, and its religiosity is distorted. This is in addition to several other serious problems. The coronavirus is only a symptom of all this. Again, see my above-mentioned columns and the talkbacks that followed them.
Discussion on Answer
Leave the Haredi sector and move to the private sector.
Whatever he wants. Why does a person need to belong to a sector at all? I’d leave all sectors.
That’s what I did, but for some reason you hear among many people the strange claim that nowadays you have to belong to a sector…
Someone who is mentally and emotionally capable of investing great effort and reaching goals in forming a worldview and an opinion on each and every issue can avoid belonging to a sector. Just as someone who studies nutrition and spends his whole life researching the effects of certain foods on his body can put together for himself an optimal menu and a lifestyle with precise proportions and be healthy and alert and so on. For most people, from the standpoint of maximizing feelings of enjoyment, it is better to invest in their own field of expertise and in other things to go with the flow (and by analogy—to eat according to general knowledge, or to look over a few menu guidelines from the internet and follow them more or less, or appoint for themselves some local diet authority). There are so many people with so many fields of expertise, and only exceptional individuals can avoid huge gaps in knowledge across many different and varied areas, including some that seem central to others. There is also something fractal about the feeling of ignorance in education (when you enter a certain field, unfamiliarity with some subfield is also felt as a serious crater, and it just never ends), and a person has to choose the front on which he advances.
A Mere Saying, do you really think one needs the mental and emotional capacity to invest great effort and reach goals in forming a worldview and an opinion on each and every issue in order to avoid belonging to a sector? After all, most people do not form worldviews and opinions on each and every issue. Moreover, there are those who are not interested in forming a worldview and an opinion. What exactly is the disadvantage in being a “simple” Jew, just as was common in the not-so-distant past? From there on, each person can let his thoughts, worldviews, and opinions roam freely.
Aharon, nice. I liked it.
A Mere Saying, your words shock me so much that to my mind they are the purest possible expression of the need not to belong to a sector. You define a sector as an establishment that makes an entire basket of decisions for me sweeping across the board, which I am supposed to adopt automatically. Truly horrifying.
Rabbi, thanks for the references, but I didn’t completely manage to understand the claim in A:
does concern for danger to the lives of the many (and at what degree of dropping out) indeed override physical danger to the many?
I assume that concern is no small part of what stands behind the approach… aside from the concern over the destruction of the community, unless in essence they are the same concern, though in my humble opinion there is some room to distinguish a bit.
For example, the words of the Sages are well known: “From where do we know that causing a person to sin is worse than killing him? For one who kills him kills him in this world, and he still has a share in the World to Come; but one who causes him to sin kills him in this world and in the World to Come.”
I’m not saying one should belong דווקא to the sector one’s parents belonged to, but rather choose whatever sector you like, just don’t bother to form an independent, reasoned view on every issue and make waves. It’s simply not important enough and not worth it, and there are much more important things to do (like learning and mastering real fields of knowledge, raising a happy family, enjoying life, making money, and advancing). At the end of the day there is some common denominator to all the traits that generally characterize a certain sector, and there is an organizing logic, even if one could delve into it surgically, split it apart, and create a custom-made portion. The shock and anxiety you mentioned are, in my opinion, typical of any artisan in his art who thinks the field he chose is very important, and they suffer from excessive dramatization. In Sparta you would educate everyone from age 3 to know how to throw javelins.
A Mere Saying
What you are basically encouraging is a lack of growing up (immaturity): letting others think in your place. But everything you said itself came from independent thought (“better to focus on one field,” etc.). So I suggest to you that maybe you should hand over thought on these issues to others too, since your mind is generally stunted (part of the whole point of intellect—thinking—is that it is general. Even placing trust in professionals also requires a bit of understanding of the professional field in question, if only to know whom to trust and not fall into the hands of charlatans). In other words, thinking is also a profession—philosophy. I suggest that you leave thinking about matters of thought to the professionals as well.
Emmanuel, come tell me for example what unique conclusions you yourself have reached (as distinct from standard belonging to a sector and occupying some familiar point within it). Rabbi Michael Abraham is of course a unique example of someone who plowed through and ground away at everything and also produced his own conclusions. If he is Shakespeare, does everyone need to write sonnets for himself? Since we’ve already come to suggestions, then I suggest to you, after the ridiculous farce you put up here on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, to come down a bit from the cloud of absurd pretentiousness you’re sailing on with extreme lack of self-awareness.
As an alternative or an addition to the private sector, I suggest moving to the sector of the Jewish people
A Mere Saying
You’re simply a creature. I have nothing more to say.
Or in short, I did not fulfill what Scripture says: “Do not speak in the ears of a fool, for he will despise the wisdom of your words.”
Y., I referred you to the columns.
In general, nobody has the right to endanger others because of his own weaknesses and his desire to protect himself from them. Besides, from that perspective there is no step on earth that is not a danger-to-life issue. I haven’t seen them being careful there about refraining from smoking cigarettes. Though with that same primitive way of thinking I mentioned, they think that a cellphone and text messages are also danger-to-life issues. That is exactly what I was talking about.
With God's help, 4 Tishrei 5780
In this, Prof. Roni Gamzu, who is not among the devotees of “lockdowns,” is distinctive, since stopping the routines of life, economic and communal, carries a heavy emotional price; crisis and depression contribute to weakening the body’s natural immunity, and when the soul is broken—the body breaks too.
The wisdom is to continue life, but cautiously: to wear masks, keep distance between one person and another and keep hands clean, and to limit gatherings and the like. In every sector there are those inclined to scoff at the Health Ministry guidelines because they think that this way it is impossible to function. On the other hand, there are many good people who call for acting with the proper caution.
The more that many people in every sector show that it is possible to study and pray, work and hold joyous events in small groups, while taking the required precautions—the personal example is “contagious.” When the surroundings see a person continuing to function while observing the precautions, those around him understand that it is possible, and they too are careful.
So too in observing the commandments: one who thinks that it is impossible to live a normal life while being careful about every little detail may cast off the yoke of the commandments, thinking that “you can’t live like this.” But when people see others living and functioning normally without belittling any halakhic detail, they understand that life and caution do not contradict one another.
With blessings, Shatz
Leave the Haredi sector and move to the… sector?