Haviv Rettig Gur is the chief analyst for the Times of Israel.
– Tomer Appelbaum (@tomerappelbaum) October 5, 2020
The event, the rapes, the strange and informal of the regulations of the virus, even at the funeral of a beloved rabbi infected with the same virus, seem to pass hand in hand in vital portions of the Haredi community. pass without some other example of contempt for viral restrictions through a Haredi organization or some other.
Even those who sympathetically observe the cultural differences that motivate the community’s resistance to social estating are stunned by widespread violations.
No one is surprised, then, when government coronavirus tsar Ronni Gamzu tells the coronavirus cabinet, as he did on Monday, that Haredi’s disease rates are 4 times higher than those of the general population, or that Haredim, somely 12% of Israel’s population represents 40% of new detected instances.
Expressions of resentment towards the behavior of the Haredi are widespread among the non-haredim, unsurprisingly, even those who sympathetically check the cultural gaps that lead the network to resist social estification: the centrality of prayer and the rituals of the network, giant families cradled small apartments in this impoverished population, the formula of devout schooling founded on the classical bureaucracy of a textual-to-one examination-are stunned through the rampant violations.
There is an organization concerned and frustrated by Haredi’s behavior: The Haredim themselves
But there is an organization concerned and frustrated through the behavior of the Haredi: the Haredim themselves, whose popularity of their community’s mistakes in dealing with the pandemic, and the frustration and depression that accompanies them, now dominate their media and politics. through internal community discussions.
Earlier this week, a Haredi political analyst had an explanation for the growing anger of non-Israelis for non-compliance with coronavirus restrictions.
“Let’s be transparent here,” Ishay Cohen, a political analyst at Kikar Hashabat, an important media outlet, wrote on Twitter. “Journalists and flacks who document the Hasidic courts in an integral way are the ones that drive incitement to opposition to the Haredi public. “
To be even clearer, Cohen refers to Haredi journalists and publicists.
“Everyone acts according to the dictates of their rabbis, that is true, even if we do not perceive their way,” he said, referring to the Hasidic sects that, brazenly and under the orders of their rabbis, circumvent the regulations of social estating. “But there is no mandate to publicized the hassidim who collect videos in violation of restrictions, only to stick a finger in the eyes of the laity. “
In other words, it’s one thing for your Rabbi to tell you that it’s general to disobey the directives, but it’s rushing to tell the whole country.
One of Twitter’s users, Haredi, who responded to Cohen’s much less charitable frustration, is one of the best-known political operators of the Israeli Haredi community, a successful former political strataist of Benjamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert, founder of Haredi’s media, and a ubiquitous voice on Haredi’s affairs in Israel’s broader media landscape.
“I ask the aristocracy of his intentions,” Zilbershlag said of haredi cameramen who downloaded all photographs of the violation of regulations on social media. “It’s his way of going out and hurting, and evil is terrible. “Kiryat Gat was accompanied by the legend, “according to restrictions,” only to avoid being included in moysrim’s developing list,” Zilbershlag said.
The photograph showed policemen visiting a Haredi seminar in the south of Kiryat Gat city to verify that viral restrictions were met; they entered a crowded room, reportedly to obtain the blessing of the local Hasidic Rebe. (Police then refuted this account, stating that it was “an apparent distortion of the truth and that the photo was taken out of context. “) The photo taken from this assembly and enthusiastically shared through the skilful publicists of the Hasidic sect on Twitter, showed the status of others nearby, a fan blowing in the room and some of the participants without proper masks.
The Moysrim are tellants, with the connotation of the kind of tellants who would denounce their Jewish compatriots to an anti-Semitic Tsarist commissioner. The term is now understood in Haredi jargon in reference to those who tell Israeli police about giant meetings in Haredi. population centers – and those who, in their quest to spread the gospel of each and every one of their Rabbi’s daily acts, end up sowing anger and bitterness for non-compliance with the norms of their community.
Zilbershlag’s accusation is astonishing. Cohen is angry at some Hasidic sects not only for breaking the rules, but also for publishing this fact online and thus provoking resentment against the Haredim. Zilbershlag’s answer: they do it on purpose. In other words, there are elements of the Haredi network that deliberately generate hatred for the Haredim among the rest of the Israeli population.
During the cholera epidemic that hit the city of Vilnius in 1848, Rabbi Israel Salanter told his fans that they were allowed to eat in small quantities the rapid of Yom Kippur if they feared that strict adherence to the rapids would weaken them and make them more vulnerable. disease.
According to a later account of his son Yitzhak Lipkin’s decision, the wonderful Lithuanian sage was involved not only with the fitness of his network but also with his reputation. He feared that a rapid weakening of his fanatics would lead non-Jews to say “that it was because of the religion of Israel that they attracted the disease upon them. “
Haredism is a strange phenomenon. This is not a subjective judgment from the outside, it is one of the elementary portions of the conscious goal of Haridism: to be strange. Rabbis Haridi dress differently from the network around them, not only because their ancestors did, or because of an express restriction of the devout law, but also only to stand out, to be visual representatives and bearers of a culture that, like them, is indifferent to the daily life and vicissitudes of the history around them.
As a Hasidic Rebe explained to this writer, the special outfit meant that “I can’t queue for a movie that doesn’t come to the case. “I can’t get mad at who cuts me in line,” at least not without bringing with it the entire ancient construction of Judaism in combat.
Sociologists who examine Haredi society communicate about the exclusive costumes and other planned strangeness bureaucracies as methods of affirming and the group’s team spirit. The barriers of appearance and culture between them and the global exterior serve to sign loyalty to those who in studies, the Haredim report the highest levels of satisfaction with life and happiness, largely because of the sense of solidarity united instilled through this planned alterity.
The result: the Haredim do not ignore how they look in the outside world; this consciousness is at the heart of their culture.
It also explains why a Haredi analyst like Zilbershlag would possibly accuse some Haredi hounds of intentionally instilting anti-Haredi sentiment in the rest of Israeli society. There are those who deserve to be higher barriers.
Unfortunately, prominent journalists say, these methods tend to work.
“It’s easy to recognize ourselves,” said Yossi Elituv, editor-in-chief of Mishpacha, the most widely read Haredi weekly, in an interview with Channel 12 on Monday. “We wear black, we have our top hats. ” The media, he accused, show Haredim when they cover coronavirus stories with no further explanation as to why convincing photographs produced through his unique attire.
And that comes at a cost. ” When you have a government that doesn’t work, that pits Israelis who oppose others, and when [journalists won’t do it] they need to tell a story about an entire country that has collapsed in the last seven months, about leadership that has fled to their own personal struggles, letting the rest of the country bleed to death – then suddenly you locate the Haredim.
His mere visibility, Elituv believes, makes it a replacement for a wider collapse, and this has led to a predictable reaction of the haredim themselves: “For more than seven months, the confidence of haredi citizens [in everything beyond the Haredi community] has collapsed. »
Aryeh Erlich, a Haredi media personality who presents a communication screen on Israeli radio, tells a story.
“The Haredim are a unique community, painted on a highly identifiable palette. You can easily locate them in a synagogue, photograph them with their shtreimels and tapas, engrave dishes [festive meals on the rabbi’s table] and drop them off at Yom Kippur’s premises. It’s not just the Israelis who forget the restrictions on the beach or in the park, it’s not a story, it’s just a disobeying citizen,” he said.
And the Haredim are frustrated.
“Weakened adherence to regulations is a human herbal reaction to nearly 8 months of suffocation. Remember that at Easter [in April], a single synagogue doesn’t open, you don’t open a single synagogue, nothing. But time passes, the stage is reevalued, human nature has a tendency to minimize it and the result is general relaxation,” he said.
Protests against Netanyahu don’t help. These protests “do not justify” the violation of Haredi rules, but they do so in part, Erlich said. “We all know that one of the ten commandments of Islam — and the Haredim are no others here — is ” never be the idiot. “”
To combat “the ignorance, the ‘believe me’ mentality, the infuriating laxity” of the Haredi reaction to the pandemic, he said, the rest of Israeli society will have to interact with the Haredi community, “invest every imaginable resource to explain – Without condescension! – and seeking to delve into psychology and understand.
Erlich is a call to triumph over resentment, it is quite noble until one realizes that it is a call born of despair.
Anxiety depletion has settled on large swaths of the Haredi Israeli community, which feels threatened by pandemic and confinement. Journalists and Haredi leaders do not know how to make their communities comply with government restrictions, even as the virus makes its way through its neighborhoods, a cycle of killings of family members and beloved rabbis.
You know, deeply and viscerally, how bad you look, you don’t know what to do about it.