JERUSALEM (AP) – Mendy Moskowits, a member of Jerusalem’s ultra-Orthodox Belz Hassidic sect, does not understand the uproar over believers like him.
In recent weeks, ultra-Orthodox Jews have defied coronavirus restrictions by holding large funerals for the beloved rabbis who died of COVID-19, celebrating great weddings and continuing to send their children to schools. The meetings have sparked clashes with police and an unprecedented wave of public outrage at the religious community.
On Tuesday night, hundreds of ultra-Orthodox protesters protested the blockade restrictions, set fire to containers and clashed with police officers in Jerusalem.
Moskowits, like many other ultra-Orthodox believers, says Israeli society does not understand its way of life and has turned its community into a scapegoat.
“The media gives us, in my opinion, a false misrepresentation,” he said.
The ultra-Orthodox community represents approximately 12% of Israel’s 9.3 million people. But he has exerted excessive influence, using his status as king in parliament for profit and generous government subsidies.
Ultra-Orthodox men are exempt from compulsory military service and often receive social assistance payments while continuing to study full-time in seminaries throughout adulthood. Their schools enjoy extensive autonomy and focus almost entirely on religion, while shunning basic subjects such as math and science.
These privileges have generated contempt on the part of the general public, a resentment that has turned into total hostility during the coronavirus crisis.
Gilad Malach, a researcher at the Institute for Democracy in Israel, says ultra-Orthodox believers accounted for more than a third of the country’s COVID-19 cases by 2020. Among Israelis over the age of 65, the ultra-Orthodox mortality rate it was three times that of the general population, he added.
Data from the Ministry of Health show vaccination rates in ultra-Orthodox areas well behind the national average.
Malach said the ultra-Orthodox non-compliance stemmed in part from the fact that members did not believe they “needed to obey state rules, especially when it comes to matters of religious behavior.”
The ultra-Orthodox, also known as “Haredim,” follow a strict interpretation of Judaism, and the prominent rabbis are the arbiters of the community in all matters. Many consider secular Israelis a recent aberration of centuries of unaltered Jewish tradition.
“We have rabbis. We don’t just do what we have in mind, ”Moskowits said. “We have been listening to them for several thousand years. Today we will also listen to them ”.
Although the ultra-Orthodox community is far from monolithic, many rabbis have ignored or even intentionally rejected security rules. Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, 93, one of the most influential spiritual leaders, has insisted that schools remain open throughout the crisis.
One recent day, dozens of ultra-Orthodox girls cascaded out of a primary school in the Romema neighborhood that was operating in violation of the law. Few wore masks or kept their distance from others. Classes were held at the elementary schools for boys and yeshivas nearby.
“We can’t make a generation explode,” said Moskowits, who lives in Romema. “We’re still sending our boys to school because we have rabbis who say the study of the Torah saves and protects.”
In a community that largely shuns the Internet, rabbis sketch “pashkevils” or public notices on the walls of religious neighborhoods to spread their messages.
Some warnings urged people not to get vaccinated, even using images of the Holocaust to scare people. “The vaccine is completely unnecessary! The pandemic is long gone! ”Read, comparing the rush for vaccines with boarding a train to the Auschwitz death camp.
Ultra-Orthodox leaders say these views are held by a radical minority. They say most people respect safety rules and the virus spreads because communities are poor and people live in small apartments with large families.
Moskowits, a 29-year-old father of two, said some families have up to 10 children and only one bathroom. From the age of 14, the boys are sent to boarding schools and only spend Saturday at home.
For many, the blockade “technically, physically doesn’t work,” Moskowits said. He called it a “violation of human rights.”
Moskowits, who grew up in the UK, speaks English with a British accent, but his vocabulary is very seasoned with words in Yiddish and Hebrew. He wears the black velvet cap, pressed white shirt, and black pants typical of ultra-Orthodox men, but without a mask, even though the government requires them in public. He said he hired COVID-19 in March and claims a letter from his doctor excuses him from wearing a mask.
A real estate developer, he punctuates his workday with prayers in a neighborhood synagogue and tries once a week to pray on the western wall of Jerusalem, the holiest place where Jews can worship. Once a day, he performs ablutions in a mikvah, a Jewish ritual bath, and regularly studies religious texts with a partner.
The religious community is growing rapidly even though economists have long warned that the system is unsustainable. About 60 percent of its population is under the age of 19, according to the Israeli Institute of Democracy.
The protection of the ultra-Orthodox way of life (or Yiddishkeit) is the ultimate goal of the community. If this means that infections spread, this is a price some members are willing to pay.
The ultra-Orthodox “sacrifice most of their lives for the next generation and to preserve Yiddishkeit. We give it our all, ”said Moskowits.
This view is hardly universal.
Nathan Slifkin, an Orthodox rabbi living in Israel, complained in a recent publication in the Jewish Chronicle that members of the Haredi community “really see no connection between transgressing restrictions and dying of COVID.”
Yehuda Meshi-Zahav, head of an ultra-Orthodox ambulance service called ZAKA, lost her parents to the virus in January. He says rabbis urging followers to violate coronavirus regulations have “blood on their hands.”
Funerals play a central role in traditional Jewish life and the pandemic has made them all too common. Cars with megaphones circulate in religious neighborhoods announcing deaths and funeral details. Pashkevils notify communities when a prominent rabbi dies.
Shmuel Gelbstein, deputy director of a Jerusalem funeral society for the ultra-Orthodox community, said this year has been “very busy, very difficult in terms of mortality, both in terms of ordinary deaths and of course, the coronavirus, which is certainly an amount that is added to the load ”.
The funerals of two top Haredi rabbis who died of COVID-19 attracted about 10,000 mourners last week.
The unorthodox majority in Israel was outraged by what they considered contempt for the rules and selective enforcement by the authorities.
But the ultra-Orthodox say they are being unfairly singled out, noting that protests against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, protected by free speech laws, have allowed the pandemic to continue.
Moskowits explained that for young people who attended these funerals, prominent rabbis are “a huge part of your life.”
“When these younger boys go to a funeral, they feel like their father is dead,” he said. “Nothing stands in the way. In any case, he will go to the funeral. “