THEOLOGIANS SHOULD NOT LET THE GLOBAL HEALTH CRISIS GO TO WASTE
Like all civilizations, Judaism reacts – albeit cautiously –
to seismic events.
Take for example the development of Hasidism which was partly a response to Cossack
brutality in Poland. Or Hassidism’s Mitnagdim opponents who were reacting to Shabbetai
Tzvi’s false messianism. Reform developed because modernizers worried Orthodoxy
was ill-suited to take advantage of emancipation. Zionism was a reaction to the
failure of that same emancipation. Likewise, Conservative Judaism was a reaction to
Reform’s radical reformations.
And so on.
Combined with the unravelling of the American polity, the Coronavirus pandemic will transform Jewish civilization in ways we cannot yet envision.
We are already seeing the sociological and psychological
impact of Coronavirus on religious life. Worshippers miss gathering as a
congregation. Even where services take place in person face masks, and physical
distancing creates a stilted experience. That does not mean when all this is
over, everyone will be content to resume their usual places in the pews.
A new coronavirus Responsa is developing in the classical
Orthodox world. (Do you need to fast during times of plague? Are you allowed to
drive home after taking someone to the hospital on Shabbes to avoid further
exposure to the virus?) Meanwhile, some in the open Orthodox minority have
joined with liberal streams in allowing Kaddish to be recited at weekday Zoom
minyans.
Much has also been written about the uptick in antisemitism. Unlike the Black
Death which unleashed a wave of pogroms, the 21st-century
Coronavirus is accompanied mostly by increased dissemination of Jew-hating messages.
These come from white and black supremacists as well as
from PLO and other anti-Zionists.
My interest here is less sociological, psychological,
Halachic, or even political and more theological. An observant and erudite friend of mine thinks I am
engaging in a fool’s errand. He says Random events happen, and not to make the
pandemic a God issue. This sounds like a variation on Richard Elliott Friedman’s
hypothesis that God has withdrawn from intervening in
human affairs.
My sensible self finds the view that God is not a
micromanager utilitarian. Yet I think this is a discussion worth having. Israel’s
job is to struggle with God.
Perhaps the Coronavirus will change how people think about the
Creator. Will the need for religious certainty increase? Or will God become irrelevant
to more Jewish young people?
The competition is not necessarily better situated. The Humanist camp can offer
uncertain science, meager pastoral support, and impermanent community. In a COVID-19
foxhole this may be insufficient.
Perhaps that is why some who seldom pray are
telling pollsters they have been appealing for divine intervention.
Or, maybe,
this in-your-face, social-media-saturated, 24/7 cable news covered pandemic
will reinforce existing befuddlement.
As social scientists consider how people are thinking about
God, theologians will want to focus on what religious convictions the crisis is
raising. But also, what clerics are saying that is new.
You may have seen this poignant moment of religious
self-criticism from Haredi Rabbi Gershom Edelstein head of the Ponevezh Yeshiva
in B’nei Brak. Edelstein is a significant figure in the Lithuanian or non-Hassidic stream of ultra-Orthodoxy. His yeshivashe
milieu leans toward a religiosity that is obsessive, insular, and puritanical.
So, when Edelstein engages in public self-criticism it is
worth paying attention: “There’s something we have to understand here … the
Haredim have died, in comparison to the general population, at a much higher
percentage. Abroad as well, Haredim have died at a higher percentage than the
rest of the [Jewish] public. What does this mean?”
His conclusion was that God judges the religious more harshly than Jews raised in the ignorance
of what I would term the Muggle world.
On first blush, he was challenging Haredim to set a good example for ethical behavior and
interpersonal relations or derech eretz. Was he insinuating that his
followers should be more courteous behind the wheel or in the public square? To
be kinder to each other in the synagogue and gentler to their wives and
children at home?
Maybe. Maybe not.
Conceivably he was really calling
for added stringencies in the Haredi lifestyle. New restrictions on permissible
foods, additional layers on female bodies, and more frum signalling.
Some clerics were playing an altogether different blame game. Ultra-Orthodox
Rabbi Meir Mazuz, a Sephardi chauvinist
of Tunisian ancestry, intuits that God is punishing humanity for its postmodernist social mores, especially regarding homosexuality.
Reform Judaism in contrast
is blaming no one (well maybe Donald Trump) but does want its adherents to use the
time of Corona to promote
racial and
social justice.
The challenge is to promote universal social justice while not shape-shifting Judaism into something it isn't.
The modern Orthodox theologian Rabbi Irving
Greenberg seems to suggest
that no one
is to blame for the Coronavirus and it is not a punishment. However, perhaps the
Lord is calling on humanity to take part in repairing the flaws of His
unfinished creation (Tikun Olam).
At the very least we should not make things worse.
It is too much to ask non-Orthodox rabbis to preach that
left-leaning political activism ought not to supersede Jewish ritual commitment.
That Shabbat needs to be taken seriously, and that peoplehood and covenant is
integral to Jewish civilization.
Is it too much to ask Orthodox rabbis to accept that ritual commitment ought not to supersede menschlichkeit?
אֵין תּוֹרָה, אֵין דֶּרֶךְ אֶרֶץ. אִם אֵין דֶּרֶךְ אֶרֶץ, אֵין תּוֹרָה
Jettison your religious
haughtiness and accept (gasp) that no one, actually,
has a Hotline to God.
Is it too much to ask?
Of course, it is too much! We are not on the cusp of the
messianic era.
I'd settle for a polemical ceasefire and for more of our spiritual leaders to set aside tribalism and partisanship -- just for the duration of the pandemic.
What matters as our world slides into another miserable and
suffocating wave of the Coronavirus?
That is what we need to ask ourselves.
And that is what our clerics need to ponder.
