Thread by @AnshelPfeffer

I spent a heart-breaking Shabbat afternoon in Bnei Brak and Sunday morning in Mea Shearim and Geula. I’ve spent 23 years writing about the ultra-Orthodox community and I doubt it will ever be the same after the rabbis’ terrible response to coronavirus
haaretz.com/israel-news/.p…

The major outbreaks of #Covid_19 in Haredi neighborhoods will soon almost certainly lead to a surge of more serious cases and pressure on the ICU units creating tension between the ultra-Orthodox and other sectors of Israeli society who have been isolating properly for weeks now.

No one will forget Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky who today ordered the ultra-Orthodox close all synagogues and pray alone, 2 weeks earlier insisted that all their schools continue teaching as usual, while the rest of Israeli schools closed down. A massive blow to rabbinical authority.

It will be impossible to forget while the ultra-Orthodox were openly flouting the isolation rules, their representatives enjoy unprecedented political influence under Netanyahu and one of their own, Yaakov Litzman is health minister. Resentment is already growing among Israelis.

It’s worth noting that while in the US and UK, many ultra-Orthodox rabbits reacted to coronavirus in a responsible way, among their Israeli counterparts this was hardly the norm. In Israel they have grown accustomed to being allowed total autonomy from the state which funds them.

It isn’t just a failure of the rabbis’ leadership and of the government’s communications. It’s a failure of the ultra-Orthodox ideology of insularity and reliance only on Torah-learning to sustain their community. And it’s a failure of Israeli society’s shared responsibility.

The Haredi ideology whereby every man devotes his life to Torah-study is a post-Holocaust notion based on mythologizing the past. In reality only a tiny minority studied their entire lifetime. The concept of rabbinical infallibility is also relatively new. Both are challenged now

The disproportion of Haredim in the US and UK among coronavirus deaths in Jewish communities & the fact half those on ventilators in Israeli hospitals are Haredim, highlights what some observers have been saying for years, the Haredi insular society is ultimately unsustainable.

It was evident a community of over a million, predominantly young men and women, could not continue to exist in its current form without vocational skills, cut off from the outside world and knowledge by a small group of nonagenarian men. How tragic that a pandemic proved this.

I know some will say I’m being “anti-Haredi”, or worse, but I really have come to love the ultra-Orthodox community, the more I’ve got to know wonderful individuals in it. That’s why I’m so angry their so-called leaders have let them down so tragically.
haaretz.com/israel-news/.p…