In God They Trust

"Throughout this pandemic, infection rates in Haredi [Ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities] and some Arab towns have been more than double the rate of the wider population. Encouraged by their religious leaders, who they revere and follow unquestioningly, they have resisted adhering to many public health measures intended to manage the contagion rate and have insisted that continued prayer will do more to contain the virus than masks or social distancing."

Vivian Bercovici, Journalist, Tel Aviv

In the United States Evangelical churches have resisted public health and government instructions to close to normal activities during the pandemic. Drive-in services were put in place in many churches to allow congregations to meet in smaller, socially distanced numbers in church parking lots. In some churches built to accommodate huge memberships, there was resistance to mandated closures. Large church gatherings of fundamentalists in Korea and elsewhere were found to be responsible for massive COVID outbreaks.

SAUL LOEB via Getty Images

Supporters listen as President Donald Trump speaks at a Students for Trump event at the Dream City Church in Phoenix.

 

In Montreal in the early stages of the novel coronavirus, Hasidic communities with their large families and penchant for socializing, alongside congregations packed into limited interiors, cases of COVID rose quickly, particularly when congregation members travelled to synagogues in New York to meet with their American counterparts and brought infections back with them that spread in the community. Government and health authorities had little option but to impose 14-day lockdowns on a number of Hasidic communities in the Montreal area to control the outbreaks.

The Tash community, in Boisbriand, north of Montreal, has a population of roughly 4,000. (Ryan Remiorz/The Canadian Press)

 

 

In many areas of the world religious fundamentals declared themselves protected from harm by their faith. That it was far more important to continue attendance at their places of worship to fervently pray and that those of faith could depend upon the protection that faith conferred on them. Nothing untoward could occur to these believers because a force more powerful than any mere virus would keep them safe from harm. It is as though religious fervour robs people of common sense. Their faith so intense no room is left for critical thinking.

 

And norsis the the Islamic world free of fundamentalist Islmists who refuse the majority consensus of closing down mosques during the pandemic. From Cairo to Mogadishu, the risks of contagion were ignored in many mosques: "I am not telling you to reject the preventive measures, but there is too much exaggeration of coronavirus", Sheikh Abdi Hayi in Mogadishu said in his sermon, as people prayed on the street, the packed interior of the mosque now allowing them to enter.

Faisal mosque in Islamabad during Jummah prayer  Photo Shazziya Mehmood: "Kindly arrest all of them, they put everyone at risk"

In Karachi, Pakistan’s biggest city, mosques were intensely crowded as the faithful flocked to hear a religious scholar inform his congregation via loudspeaker: "We are not too weak to let this one virus empty our mosques." And in the town of Depok, south of Jakarta, Inonesia, Aswin Jusar 76, stated "Allah is protecting those who abide by their obligations", as he prepared to attend a Friday prayer despite a call from the mayor for religious activities to be suspended.

Muslim faithfuls attend Friday prayers at the National Mosque in Abuja, Nigeria [Afolabi Sotunde/Reuters]

 

The religious communities in New York hosted an uncommonly high number of COVID cases throughout the pandemic, earning criticism from health and government authorities for their insistence on the vital importance in their lives of attendance at synagogue. In Brooklyn Orthodox Jews were preparing to mark Yom Kippur, the most sober, important day in the Jewish holidays calendar, raising the concern that praying in numbers would expose more people to infection in an area where community transmission is already much above the average.

Illustrative. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

In Israel, with its nine million population, another lockdown, more strict than the original has been imposed on the entire country. It is not, however, the entire country where COVID cases have risen and continue to rise steeply, and for this reason alone, many Israelis are enraged at once again having their lives disrupted without sound purpose but to satisfy the demands of he ultra-Orthodox whose political wing holds the balance of power in the Knesset. Though small in numbers, by supporting the Likud and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, they are able to exert outsized influence in government decisions.

The Israel Democracy Institute, a non-partisan think-tank, released a poll report that 25 percent of the Israeli public have no trust now in the prime minister's management of the nation's COVID situation. In early April that number was 60 percent approval, reflecting trust in the ability of Prime Minister Netanyahu to act expeditiously and carefully to gain control of the virus's impact and its spread. Their trust was rewarded when case numbers plunged close to zero. The public was awarded an exhortation to relax and enjoy themselves; restrictions lifted.

Like publics everywhere in the world, released from the bondage of unnatural social life, evading all human contact, focusing on hygiene to an uncommon degree, and remaining socially isolated, the opportunity to break  free led people to behave recklessly and the predictable resulted with a steadily increasing case rise. This time the government was not as quick to take remedial, protective action. Its focus was on exterior politics and diplomacy, along with controversial plans of note drawing international concern.

As another crisis with an expanding case load loomed, the public became distrustful of their government and protests began mounting in numbers and frequency. Israel now posts one of the highest daily per capita infection rates globally. That has resulted in large numbers of Israelis testing positive and being seriously ill with hospitalizations so great in number hospital capacity and ability to care for the sick are near to collapse. The military has been tasked with setting up field hospitals for the overflow.

Closer inspection to numbers and locations demonstrate that it is the Haredi and some Arab towns responsible for the greater rise in infections. When the former director of the ministry of health, epidemiologist Ronnie Gamzu was appointed to manage the response to the pandemic, his expertise and initiatives have been knocked back by the prime minister when they focus on the number of cases in the Haredi community. A very small proportion of Israeli Jews belong to the ultra-Orthodox community, about 12 percent in total.

Yet that 12 percent wields hugely disproportionate influence, thanks to its role as Likud support in a minority government. Not just this time around, but following most elections when, small in number as they are, they end up holding the balance of power through their conditional support of the government. Conditioned on government listening carefully to their exhortations, and demands under threat of removal of support and the fall of the government.

In this instance, it is the coronavirus that the tail wags the dog over. Their insistence that should prayer and study halls close, outdoor political demonstrations must also be shut down. They demanded that the entire country, irrespective of many parts of the country having little reason to shut down, with low case loads -- be shut down, not only the Haredi communities where most of the cases arise. This is a situation that has enraged most Israelis, most of whom are not particularly religious, and many of whom are secular Jews.

Many Haredi during the first lockdown refused adamantly to follow government recommendations. Self isolation and mask-wearing was not for them, much less social distancing. this is an attitude that still prevails in many of the areas Haredis congregate within. The broader Israeli public is irate over this, bringing ever greater numbers of Israelis out to the protests. An effect of the latest, strict lockdown will be the death of many small and mid-size business interests.

Ultimately, fundamentalists anywhere and everywhere seek guidance from a mystical, mythical figure above, scorning and belittling the authority of elected governments dedicated to serve the best interests of everyone they represent. The loyalty of these people of hyper-faith beliefs is to their vision of an almighty spirit, never to the nations in which they are citizens. Their care and concern goes no further than their fellow congregants; none others need apply.

Ultra-Orthodox Jews in a Jerusalem synagogue September 9, 2020, Photo: Ohad Zwogemberg

Dangerously Cloistered Religion-Obsessed Minds

"[In order to] prevent future generations from having to suffer what they suffered [Yohanan and Shifra Lowen await a judgement against the Province of Quebec and Boisbriand Hasidic schools]."
"These illegal schools still exist and several hundred students attend them, in full view of government authorities."
"The plaintiffs finished their high school education without knowing about the St. Lawrence River of the theory of evolution."
Court motion

"When he left the community, he [Yohanan Lowen] could not speak French and could not speak English very well."
"They [the former Hasidic couple are not seeking damages but a declaratory judgement; they] don’t want this to be the case for children in Hasidic schools today, even in Montreal."
Lawyer Bruce Johnston

Clara Wasserstein and Yochonon Lowen arrive at the Montreal courthouse Monday. The former Hasidic Jews claim they completed their secondary education without knowing what the St. Lawrence River is or ever hearing about the theory of evolution. Graham Hughes / THE CANADIAN PRESS

Like any other people who leave a cult, finding its strictures and aversion to the greater society around them stifling and incompatible with a larger social contract, diminishing their pride in their ethnic and religious roots as a result of the severity of the constraints, and ultimately finding themselves unable to fit into the larger community in which they live and work; finding above all that the education they received as children ill-prepared them for life anywhere outside the community, a couple in Montreal who decided to leave an Orthodox Hasidic community has launched a court case.

Clearly the education they describe and which had undergone examination by provincial education authorities for its results in adequately preparing children to embark into the world as adults found the curriculum beyond wanting; inadequate and painfully close-minded. The children who graduated alongside the now-adult married couple were barely functional in either English or French, were almost, on graduation, illiterate and innumerate. They knew nothing about their immediate geography, much less world history past and present.

The couple appeared in Quebec Superior Court to seek a judgement against the Province of Quebec, accusing it of failing to ensure they and other Hasidic children taught in private parochial schools entirely in Yiddish, with no secular subjects on the curriculum whatever, were adequately prepared for responsible independence. The schools, moreover, had no license to recognition as educational institutes. The children attending them had no exposure to subjects in history, geography, science or art, much less the official languages of the country.

The couple was unprepared on graduation to integrate into Quebec society, despite being born in the province. Since leaving the Hasidic community in 2010 they have found it a struggle without possessing recognized high school diplomas, and equipped with the utterly lacking education they received at one of the Hasidic community's Boisbriand Hasidic schools in Montreal to qualify for employment anywhere. The kind of parochial school they attended should have been an after-hours addition to attending a regular public school where approved curricula would have formed the basis of their education.

Perhaps a good question to be put to this pair of rightly disaffected people is where lies the responsibility of parents within the Hasidic community who obviously felt their obligations to their children had been met when they received a distinctly sub-par education through this kind of schooling? Only fundamentalist fanatics might consider that as parents they have provided their children with the opportunity through a thorough, basic education to take their place in adult society when they have in fact, failed so spectacularly.

An educational assessment of 320 boys of the community found 280 among them acutely lacking in math and reading and writing in English. A youth protection agency was called in 2014 to assess a girls' school operated by the Hasidic community, discovering the students could speak English and received secular education at a somewhat lower level of difficulty than in comparison to other schools. A subsequent assessment of the boys' school found another situation altogether.

Of the boys, many among them educated in Yiddish only, were unable to speak or understand enough English to take tests without the help of an interpreter; in addition, speaking virtually no French whatever. Many of the boys were products of educational neglect; their knowledge identified as "below the minimum of what's needed to be functional and autonomous in Quebec society".

Once the families entered into an agreement with the school board to regularize education, the situation saw a marked improvement and by 2017 fewer than 100 of the boys were considered educationally "compromised", even while their education level was still below that of other students of their age group. By shielding children of the Lowy Hasidic community from 'contamination' by the social mores and values of the greater society, the community endowed their children with academic ignorance ill-preparing them for life in the modern world of today.

In order to protect the community from what he perceived as the moral decay of the outside community, Rebbe Lowy put together a set of by-laws "to govern the behavior of all the residents" of Kiryas Tosh.^[7] To live in this community, residents need to abide by these by-laws.^[7]

1. No book, newspaper, or magazine is permitted in the buildings of the community, unless their content is in conformity to strictly Orthodox Judaism.
2. All male members of the community must attend religious services, three times per day, at the synagogue.
3. No radio, television, record, or cassette is allowed in the buildings of the community.
4. No members of the community may attend the cinema or be present at any theatrical performance under the penalty of immediate expulsion.
5. All women residing in the community must dress in accordance with the Orthodox laws of modesty, as follows:
6. All dresses must be at least four inches below the knees, no trousers or panty-hose may be worn by women and girls 3 years of age or older.
7. Married women's hair must be completely covered in public, by a scarf or by a wig.
8. It is forbidden for unrelated men and women to walk together in the street.
9. Men and women must be separated by a wall (at least 7 feet high), when attending any gathering of a social or religious nature.
10. All food consumed in the buildings of the community must conform to the dietary laws of the Code of Laws and be approved by the chief Rabbi or his second in command.
11. No car may be driven by an unmarried man.
12. The members must submit any interpersonal conflict to the arbitration of a rabbinical court.
13. The Sabbath must be observed in strict conformity to Jewish law.
14. Male members of the community must study the Torah and other religious texts for at least two hours a day.

Teachers of secular subjects who come into the community must follow guidelines of their own:

1. All textbooks and literature to be used by the students in class or at home... must first be approved by the principal.
2. No stencil or photo-copy of any other book may be used without approval.
3. Students are not permitted to go to the public library nor is the teacher permitted to bring into the school, for the students, any such books.
4. No newspaper or magazine may be read in school or hung up. Students are not permitted to read the above at home either.
5. No records or tape may be used in the classroom without approval.
6. No extra subjects, books, magazine supplement or other information which is not on the required curriculum of the school may be taught.
7. For extra credit work or for class projects, students should not be told to write away for such material. The teacher should supply them with the material with approval.
8. No discussion on boyfriends.
9. No discussions of reproduction.
10. No discussion about radio, television or movies.
11. No discussion on religion.
12. No discussion about Women's Liberation
13. No homework on Thursdays.