What are those on the Haredi network that have not complied with covid guidelines?A socio-religious analysis. Opinion.
The “test of resistance” of covid crisis control the basic and contrasting socio-religious characteristics of dati (modern Orthodox/Zionist religious) and haredi
The cardiologist orders a stress check when you need to know how well your patient’s center is working. An employer interviewing a homework applicant will make the interview deliberately tense to better perceive the non-public strengths and weaknesses of the prospective employee. it does the same when it needs elite officers and infantrymen from a greater number of potential candidates.
In times of stress, our main psychosocial coping characteristics are obvious and therefore more easily “diagnosed”.
Our war of attrition with the tiny covid virus has created part of a year of trauma and tension for all sectors of Israeli society. This era of the traumatic adaptation virus therefore has a tool to reveal, to “diagnose”, the other socio-religious characteristics. dati and Haredi communities.
Dati covid confronts Yom Kippur: an artistic interaction between flattery, individual selection and the demands of a changing social reality.
In short, the effects of our six-month covid tension show that the knowledge network has faced a covid danger with an emphasis on individual duty and a friendly attitude towards fashion science. On the other hand, parts of the Haredi network have faced an emphasis on hierarchical collectivism and a suspicious and conservative attitude toward established science. Regardless of who is right, the differences in adaptation are obvious.
In fact, the difference in Yom Kippur’s respect in any of the communities this year “says a lot. “The dati network was pleased to adhere to medical recommendations and government guidelines. They closed synagogues, creatively organized outdoor prayer venues with an emphasis on social distance. , shorter prayer and altered prayer schedules, some praying at home. All adjustments were instituted under rabbinical leadership. Uniformly, masks were used.
The dati network thus supported the spirituality of the festival by creating a cutting-edge interaction between halakha and the dramatically transformative social truth of the surrounding fashion society.
If I need to be a little boldly optimistic, I can simply say that the dati network has added a new size to Yom Kippur’s spirituality through those artistic adaptations in congregational prayer. One thing in the good fortune of these adaptations has been the dynamic contribution of the individual sense of selection and duty of the faithful.
Haredi confronts Yom Kippur: a strict dependence on hierarchical rabbinical leadership and a conservative in the individual who is spiritually ”fed/raised” basically through the spirituality of his ties to the surrounding collective.
Note: In practice, there were differences in habits and what this describes is a significant percentage, but not all, of the leadership and the rabbid haredi network.
Based on the collection of websites, sections of the Haredi network have faced the covid crisis by falling strictly into the arms of adherence to tradition. Many, not all, continued to pray en masse, minians in the room, “standing” in and non-secular intimacy with their devout leaders.
Simply put, a giant component of rabbinical leadership made the decision that the most productive way for the Haredi network to deal with the covid crisis was not yet to innovate to do exactly what it has done. To use an allegory, an outdoor earthquake, the network deserves not to be allowed to cause an in-network earthquake. In order for a network that is strictly based on collective uniformity to maintain its express way of life, these rabbinical leaders felt that they simply cannot break culture through the covid.
Similarly, some Hasidic leaders and communities have refused to sacrifice the classic Beit Hashoveah celebrations, in and around, to stick to government regulations and verify public health risks. Maintaining the classic bureaucracy of non-secular collectivism has taken precedence over public protection issues as explained through the Health Minischeck. At least the priorities of this component of the Haredi network are clear.
These other dati-haredi adaptation responses to covid are highly representative of their other methods of adaptation with the surrounding postmodern secular society.
The popular understanding of the difference between dati (the devout Zionist is the right term in Israel) and the devout Haredi culture – the genuine and significant difference lies in the attitude towards Zionism and the State of Israel – is that the dati are ”haredi lite” who make a compromise between devout observance and enjoyment of the secular global it is not entirely true (see below). However, it is statistically true that the behavioral functionality of Shulchan Aruch mitsvoth is approximately twenty-five% higher in the Haredi community.
But what our covid endurance test shows is that a basic difference between partner-devout dati culture and haredi is the difference between using an individual responsibility/individualism strategy, or using conservative collectivism, as the main strategy for creating devotees. life in a basically hostile postmodern secular environment.
And contrasting socio-religious were born of contrasting definitions of religiosity and spirituality.
Dati’s religiosity and spirituality in a secular society
Very briefly, and in my research on rav Soloveitchik’s writings, modern/religious Dati/Orthodox Zionist communities have followed a cautious but positive strategy, according to which it is spiritually possible, and in many desirable areas, for the Halajic Jew to be interested and artistic in the maximum (though not in all) sectors/enterprises of the surrounding secular society, provided that this participation does not force him to violate the hala.
Most devout dati leaders claim that Tor-based participation in the secular world is a mitzvah and a vital way to build a very genuine non-secular relationship with God and his Torá. and the status quo of new communities, and paintings in professions directly similar to spaces of social and mental misery (social paintings, nursing, medicine). His rabbis are confident that a genuine and meaningful non-secular relationship with God can develop while serving in the army and practicing network painting service professions. These devoted leaders are content with military service knowing that in some cases it can diminish devout observance and verify to prevent that from happening.
More importantly, the dati network sees a participation based on the Torá in secular professions as a means of merging individual self-realization with devout spirituality. A central detail of the spirituality of the Dati, as Rav Soloveitchik argues, is proactive self-creation/updating respect. The true creation/spiritual update of the Rav Soloveitchik self can only be achieved by building a triple, mutual “alliance” relationship with oneself, God and other members of the circle of relatives and network. This is the “formula” of individual realization that Rav Soloveitchik blesses and prescribes for the true Jew of the Torá in lay and fashionable society.
This analysis, I think, explains the most productive why the Dati network was responsible, and possessed a non-secular openness, to creatively use halakha to pray and celebrate the festivities in accordance with the government’s efforts to combat covid.
Religiosity and spirituality in a secular society
The Haredi network believes it can advance its definition of religiosity and spirituality by avoiding proactive participation in the surrounding secular society and by building highly autonomous sociocultural communities. At a “superficial level,” we can say that this is because the Haredi network is “afraid” of getting involved in secular society because the ultimate elements of secular society conflict with the tor’s way of life.
Although this attitude is probably true as society becomes invasive and permissive, this argument “does not do justice” to perceive the central detail of religiosity and Haredi non-secularity in secular and fashionable society. Haredi religion and non-secularity are not based on an individual self -update on their relationship with God and others, but on the individual who dives in and merges with the surrounding Haredi collective. More specifically, the Haredi individual reports superior non-secularity through his continued friendship with the collective tradition, the collective network and the non-secular. leader of the collective.
Without submerging and merging his own non-secularity with that of the collective, the Haredi individual is like a patient coming out of a hospital respirator. A non-secular connection to his social collective is what “keeps him alive not secularly. “The non-secular life of a haredi is incredibly dependent on his life in a united, closed network, and a daily network between work, home, examination and prayer room. As a unique, distinct and independent individual, a haredi user struggles to maintain his non-secular style. Life.
In short, this “dependence” of the Haredi individual on a permanent non-secular connection with his social collective is the explanation of why the act of “social estating” has become so difficult for the Haredi community to practice. and nurtured through a non-secular collective tradition and guided through a non-secular collective hierarchy, that is why they discovered that it was so difficult to innovate creatively by observing Tichan’s vacation despite the health risks. only in the secular global when the individual is immersed and tied to an autonomous and very united hierarchical non-secular collective.
Conclusion: In non-normal and covidual times, this non-secular haredi style would be in deep crisis.
In general times, in times of non-covid, non-secular dati and Haredi models can be a success and are valid methods for developing a life founded on the Tor in the midst of secular fashion society.
In times of the traumatic covid crisis, the Haredi style turns out to be more of a physical fitness crisis, if everyone had done what the Zionist devotees had done, there was probably no danger of wasting floor on the observance of the Tor. , the conservative and collective non-secular Haredi style followed by those who have not complied with the rules does not allow social flexibility, and allows the degree of individual responsibility, obligatory to effectively cope with the very serious risk, infrequently fatal, to the aptitude of the covid.
Somewhat crudely, we can say that a significant part of the haredi network scores 7 to 8 in the progression of “collective immunity” against the risk of secular fashion society over the more than seventy years. and knowing that there are other reasons (overcrowded houses, for example), those same elements of the Haredi network get a failure score in their collective control of the existing Covid crisis.
Dr. Chaim C. Cohen, whose Ph. D. , is from the Hebrew University, is a social professor and professor at the School of Social Service at the Hebrew University and Efrata College. He lives in Psagot, Binyamin.