Harsher regulations transform daily life for such communities in Israel, United States
Ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel and the United States are pushing back against media reports of widespread non-compliance with governmental COVID-19 restrictions, saying that most people in the communities are following the rules.
Many rabbis are urging community members not to congregate for prayers, says Z., an immigrant from South Africa who lives in the ultra-Orthodox, or haredi, neighborhood of Har Nof in Jerusalem.
The ultra-Orthodox tend to follow their religious leaders’ directives.
“We have to focus on not threatening our lives and at the same time not threatening other peoples’ lives,” Z., who declined to provide her full name, told The Media Line.
Chaya Weisberg, who lives in Jerusalem’s Old City, is critical of media reports claiming that yeshivas, or schools that focus on religious teachings, “are open and the rabbis aren’t listening” to government directives.
“They found the one neighborhood that does that” and portray this as “the whole haredi community,” she complained to The Media Line.
Prof. Nadav Davidovitch, director of the School of Public Health at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, agrees.
“The haredi community is not monolithic; it has many parts,” he told The Media Line. “Some of them have very good compliance [rates]. Some of them [at the same time] have a long history of defying the Zionist state.”
Israeli Health Minister Yaakov Litzman, an ultra-Orthodox Jew himself, has been critical of those – including haredim – who disregard the guidelines.
There is, however, a legitimate reason for concern about the spread of coronavirus within the sector, with Prof. Gad Yair, of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s sociology and anthropology department, noting to The Media Line that many Jewish religious practices are communal in nature.
“The entire gamut of Jewish life is oriented around community and social solidarity,” he said. “These practices are the greatest risk for contracting the virus.”
According to the government-affiliated Coronavirus National Information and Knowledge Center, about a third of Israel’s COVID-19 infections have occurred in synagogues. Israel’s Channel 12 reported on Sunday night that many of the country’s hospitals were reporting that the majority of their coronavirus patients were from the ultra-Orthodox community.
In the ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods of Boro Park and Williamsburg in Brooklyn, one of New York City’s five boroughs, many have been diagnosed with the virus.
“I see kids playing outside together at the large [housing] developments,” Dr. Shani Bechhofer, a New York-area Jewish education consultant and community activist told The Media Line.
“I honestly don’t think their parents realize how dangerous that is,” said Bechhofer, a former candidate for the town council of Ramapo, which includes her ultra-Orthodox enclave of Monsey.
Many experts say these communities have been slower to understand the dangers and are failing take protective action.
“Unfortunately… the compliance measures took more time [for the ultra-Orthodox] than other parts of Israeli society,” Ben-Gurion University’s Davidovitch said, adding that this creates a need for increased testing.
The use of technology such as computers and smartphones is limited in the ultra-Orthodox sector, so people have less information.
David Rose, international director for ZAKA, an Israel-based organization whose mostly Orthodox volunteers rescue and recover victims of terror attacks, accidents and disasters, says the ultra-Orthodox are more likely to look to their rabbis for direction.
“If the government [and the rabbis both tell them] what to do, they are going to listen to the rabbi before they listen to the government,” he told The Media Line.
Rose says the haredi sector is not the only community in Israel that delayed its response to the pandemic.
“The media likes to go into the community and show [that its members are] not listening to what they’re supposed to do, but then I was seeing footage from the beaches in Tel Aviv over the past weekend and the parks in Kfar Saba, which were crowded,” he noted.
Ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel tend to avoid public beaches, and Kfar Saba, about 15 miles northeast of Tel Aviv, has few haredi residents.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, ZAKA has been trying to overcome information gaps. One way is by sending volunteers into religious neighborhoods during Shabbat, when many devices are turned off, calling on people who have been exposed to the virus to isolate themselves.
The organization has more than 3,500 volunteers, of whom about 2,500 are religious.
“The main thing we are trying to do [pertains to] education, because a lot of people are not connected to the internet, to WhatsApp… so a lot of people are not aware or do not understand the severity of coronavirus,” Rose said.
One of the most popular methods of mass communication in Israel’s haredi neighborhoods is the pashkevil, a poster put up along main foot routes.
“The haredi community does not have TV,” Chana Penina of Bnei Brak, a mostly ultra-Orthodox city just to the northeast of Tel Aviv, told The Media Line.
“There are signs all over Bnei Brak saying that the community has a lot of children and older people,” she noted, “and [warning to] please take this seriously.”
While most yeshivas and synagogues have now closed, there was initially resistance to closures by some ultra-Orthodox leaders, particularly in Israel. This is because prayer and the study of Torah are believed by haredim to protect one from danger.
Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, a top authority in the Israeli haredi community, is perceived as one of those leaders. Based in Bnei Brak, he said the virus could have been prevented by more Torah study.
Rabbi Avraham Rottman, who is on the staff of two major Jerusalem yeshivas, agrees.
“There is a certain risk and danger in leaving the yeshivas open, but at the same time, the risk and the danger of closing the yeshivas is greater than the disease itself,” Rottman told The Media Line. “The study of Torah has tremendous power to shield and protect and cure and heal all of mankind.”
Hasidic Jews in America insist their rabbis acted early to slow the virus’s spread.
Avi Schnall, director of the New Jersey office of Agudath Israel in America, told The Media Line that ultra-Orthodox rabbis in his state, as well as in New York, told congregants not to meet for religious purposes even though the governors had permitted it.
“We’re not only following the letter of the law, we are going beyond what the law is requiring of us,” said Schnall, whose organization is engaged in national grassroots advocacy.
Gelbstein’s Bakery, a kosher establishment in Lakewood, New Jersey, has teamed up with state authorities and a local school to provide free breakfasts and lunches for the needy.
On the first day of the program, Gelbstein’s provided 4,000 meals. That figure has multiplied itself several times over, the bakery’s lunch program coordinator, Sori, who asked that her last name not be used, told The Media Line.
“A lot of people are out of work and they desperately need help,” she said.
Monsey’s Bechhofer says that where she lives, there has been a lag in the response because government instructions are ambiguous.
The local authorities “advise” people to remain at home “as much as possible,” she states, “and say only go out for food – but now, before [the Passover holiday], everyone needs food!”
Community leaders, she adds, have publicly called for all synagogues to close.
“Almost everyone,” she notes, “has been complying.”
She adds that rabbis need to make sure businesses help people to maintain their distance from each other.
“The rabbis should [ensure] that all kosher markets switch to delivery and curbside pickup only” because the stores are crowded. That will also help people understand the danger, she explained.
Passover, which starts on the evening of April 8, is “a massive, major shopping time” for food and other items, Yosef Rapoport, a New York-based journalist and podcaster for the Yiddish24 app, told The Media Line.
“It is a time in Jewish areas when mothers take their children for new shoes. Usually, the stores are packed,” he said, adding that distributors, designers and factories had prepared stocks months ago in anticipation of demand.
“We’re talking about millions and millions of dollars [of goods] that won’t be sold,” he stated, saying that beyond the “massive economic dislocation, the rhythm of the community is interrupted.”
The coronavirus epidemic may permanently change the haredi community. For example, there are indications of a jump in internet connections in haredi communities, Dr. Gilad Malach, director of the Ultra-Orthodox Society Program at the Israel Democracy Institute in Jerusalem, told The Media Line.
“As long as the virus and restrictions… [persist], this phenomenon will spread,” he said. “This might change the community in the future.”
Hadassah Levy, a digital marketer for the educational platform Torah Live, said 300 haredi schools, mostly in the United States and the United Kingdom, have now ordered the program, which offers videos on Halacha, or Jewish law.
The pre-COVID-19 reluctance to adopt this type of technology in the classroom seems to have completely disappeared, and suddenly, online learning is not an issue anymore, she told The Media Line.
“We’ve seen tremendous turnaround there, and we hope it’s a permanent thing,” she told The Media Line.
Once schools “get the technology and see what it can do for their students, they will be less scared of it,” she said.
With no clear answer on when the pandemic will end, and with government restrictions in both the US and Israel changing rapidly, much remains unknown about the extent to which lives will be permanently changed.
Ayelet Weinstien, a nurse at Mayanei Hayeshua Medical Center in Bnei Brak, just got married and has been on leave for several weeks. When she returns, she will have a new assignment – in the hospital’s COVID-19 ward.
“The lowest [transmission] rate is in the corona department because everyone is following protocol 100%,” she told The Media Line.
ZAKA’s Rose, in fact, says he believes the number of haredi Jews observing coronavirus health guidelines is growing.
“They’re catching up,” Rose told The Media Line.
He adds, however, that some synagogues close only after someone who attends services is diagnosed.
“There is a lot of miscommunication, a lot of delay,” he says, “but once it hits them….”