Theology, Sociology and the Pandemic

By Yaakov Mascetti*

To be sincere, I’m rather sick of reading or hearing the word “Corona” in every single thing that appears on the internet – even my field, that of literary scholarship, appear to have been flooded by recent events, and the overwhelming consequences of pandemic craze. So I am going to try to write a few thoughts on the way the ultra-orthodox world in Israel has tackled the recent contagion chaos with utter irresponsibility, backing it up with a series of theological statements, and by relinquishing, in a rather disturbing manner, the individual rational skills and faculties of choice. And I’d like to do this without mentioning the word “Corona” too often (that makes it already two mentions in one paragraph of Corona… ugh, three…).

So – when the virus arrived in Israel, the country, traditionally well-trained to all sorts of emergencies, immediately reacted and imposed a series of restrictions. The present government, which I am quite famously not a great fan of, did respond to the gravity of the pandemic, and promptly emitted gradually stringent rules on Israel’s citizens, bringing to a total state of domestic isolation. Of course, I do realize it is not all as simple as that, and that I am omitting some crucial aspects – but on the whole I think we can all agree that Israel’s government responded promptly and responsibly.

All of Israel…? Yeah, no not really, well… there’s the rub – this country is partly composed of a stratum of ultra-orthodox individuals who are extremely variegated and cannot be shoved into one generalizing pot. That said, and having reiterated the caveat of “not all ultra-orthodox Jews are the same,” what happened was that a good portion of that stratum of Israeli society did not comply with those regulations – the secular Israeli government came, for the nth time, in contrast with the religious authority of a number of minor rabbis and a number of major rabbinical figures. And the latter did not understand the gravity of the situation (I’m definitely doing my very best to be understanding and generous, so yeah, they just didn’t understand) and did not give their support to the governmental regulations. Yeshivot continued to operate as usual – public prayer continued as always. What happened, of course, was that Bnei Brak became an urban area with significantly high number of contagions, as were most ultra-orthodox neighborhoods in Jerusalem. This ignited visceral reactions from non-religious citizen, and the result was the traditional manipulative chaos of senseless reactions on both sides. All this continued to plunge into the depths of social chaos until most of the above-mentioned rabbinical authorities finally decided to back up the governmental decisions and restrictions. There are, needless to say, parts (pockets) of Mea Shearim where these restrictions are, to this day, unacceptable.

Now – why would I ever even want to deal with such a problematic topic in such a short post? Well, it seems to me that things are quite complex, but they are also quite simple. Theological authority is important, and I fervently believe we need to sanction this kind of mentality, as it is applied and it rules certain parts of our society – or, in other words, live and let live. If some people need a rabbi as a source of authority for major and minor decisions in life, then that should be allowed. This does not mean that these authorities should be tolerated to impose their jurisdiction within the secular realm of public spaces – that is exactly where the Israeli model fails. To the secular governmental authorities, the public realm is where rules must be obeyed, where the individual is required to comply with laws. But due to the unclear knot between church and state here, a veritable entanglement with the most pernicious consequences, the theological authority of these rabbis is allowed to freely merge with the public non-religious spaces – the result is chaos.

The restrictions issued by the Ministry of Health here is Israel should have been accepted as the laws issued by a government under the aegis of which Hews live – this principle is known as Dina d’malkhuta dina (Aramaic: דִּינָא דְּמַלְכוּתָא דִּינָא‎, “the law of the land is the law”) and is a well-known legal principle of Jewish law, which rules that “the civil law of the country is binding upon the Jewish inhabitants of that country, and, in certain cases, is to be preferred to Jewish law” (Wikipedia). Of course, if you do not recognize the legitimacy of the Israeli government, as some extremist pockets of that stratum are known to do, then this principle is non-binding. But for the large part of the ultra-orthodox world that does work, pay taxes and recognize the authority of the government, this principle is binding.

That said, I would like to conclude by saying that whoever exploits situations in order to demonstrate the primacy of this or that authority-system, acts on unethical bases, if not to say a criminal. The virus is real – deaths are real. The gravity of this pandemic is real – the brutality of this state of affairs cannot, and must not, be enveloped in the oily glib of rhetoric, religious or not. And whoever lives following the authority of specific rabbinical authorities, must understand that religious respect does not entail the necessary relinquishing on rational thought and personal thinking and decision making. As John Milton would have said, right reason is the image of Gd in man – relinquishing that capacity entails relinquishing one’s freedom:

From “The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates” (1650)

If men within themselves would be govern’d by reason, and not generally give up thir understanding to a double tyrannie, of Custom from without, and blind affections within, they would discerne better, what it is to favour and uphold the Tyrant of a Nation. But being slaves within doors, no wonder that they strive so much to have the public State conformably govern’d to the inward vitious rule, by which they govern themselves. For indeed none can love freedom heartilie, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but licence; which never hath more scope or more indulgence then under Tyrants.

*Yaakov Mascetti (PhD) teaches at Bar Ilan University.