 |
| Charedi child beaten by Israeli police (VIN) |
It is true that people have the right – perhaps even the obligation - to protest perceived injustices. But indiscriminate violence is never excusable. It inevitably harms innocent people. Often the police who are just trying to do their job serving and protecting the public.
So before anyone screams ‘police brutality’ as did the author of this VIN article they need to know the truth about the circumstances instead of making assumptions based on misinformation; an incomplete or misleading picture or video.
It should not be surprising when there is collateral damage in situations like this. In order to know why a young child ended up looking the way the child in the picture above does at the hand of a cop, one must also know the how and and why of it. The total picture of what actually happened. Why would any cop intentionally hurt a child?
I find it hard to believe that a cop saw a child and decided to club him over the head or take a swing at him with a Billy club. My guess is that somehow this child got in the way of a cop trying to control a violent protester or defend himself from being attacked by him. But whatever the reason is I doubt it was intentional. (If it was, that is criminal and any such cop should be fired and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.)
If anyone is to blame, it is the parent that allowed a child to be there in a place... where violence was sure to break out. What kind of parent allows a child to be in a place like that?
It isn’t the extremist Charedim in Meah Shearim this time. It is mainstream Charedim in Kiryat Sefer and Boro Park doing it. What are they protesting? The requirement to wear masks and be socially distant from each other. They are protesting the closing of their Shuls and schools in order to reverse the spike in COVID cases that have occurred primarily in religious neighborhoods.
The police were there doing their jobs enforcing those requirements. That is when violent protests erupted.
These kinds of protests prove once and for all that huge numbers of Charedim do not take COVID seriously enough. No matter where they reside in the world. They are in denial about the getting infected with COVID and spreading it to the more vulnerable among them. Mostly because of self generated ignorance.
They seem to remain ignorant about the highly contagious nature of COVID. Ignorant of the fact that many of them might unknowingly be infected, asymptomatic, and pass it along to the more vulnerable among them.
How many people that are immune compromised or elderly must get seriously ill or die for them to realize what they are doing?
The fault lies not with the ignorant masses. It lies with a Hashkafa with which they have been indoctrinated that isolates them from the world. Thereby not knowing what the rest of us know. Or disbelieving it because it is not a Torah based source. It lies in a leadership of that Hashkafa that is therefore equally ignorant. And insists that all you need is Torah study and prayer to be protected. It lies with the repeated notion that God is the True Healer.
While all of these things are true, there is no excuse for ignorance of the truth and the practical steps that need to be taken as a matter of God’s will. God does not want us to die by His laws. He wants us to live by them. He requires that we do what’s necessary to achieve that goal. The rest is up to Him.
In my view the Hashkafos of these Charedim are so off track that they would sooner believe in the tooth fairy than in science. Science has become a dirty word in some of their circles. Instead of trusting people whose lives are dedicated to public health - they accuse them of not knowing anything. They will add that scientists are in any case inclined to be anti religious.
How stupid!
This is not Judaism. The fact that so many in the Charedi world think this way does not make it true.
It is is a seriously flawed Hashkafa that puts prayer and Torah study in place of life saving action. How stupid can that kind of thinking be? We need both! And yet their sense of Frumkeit leads them see the attempt to prevent the spread of COVID by limiting religious activities that are known spreaders of the virus - as anti religious.
The saddest part of all this is that this kind of mentality is sweeping the Charedi world. Studying anything but pure Torah is seen at best as a waste of time or worse - diluting the purity of Torah with nonsense!. They believe that whatever value one might find in secular studies can be found in Torah study. So that all a Jew really needs is Torah and he will have all he needs in life
Let us say for argument’s sake that is true. Let us say that everything we would ever need can be found in the Torah. What is also true is that one can learn Torah 24/7 for an entire lifetime and not scratch the surface of all the knowledge contained in it. That is in fact the very argument they make for not studying anything but Torah.
But then how it help them when they find that they need knowledge they have not come across yet (if they ever will)? This question illustrates why they need to be educated. It is so they can can understand and believe what health professionals are telling them.
And yet this Torah only approach seems to be the wave of the Charedi future. Their leaders are indoctrinating them to think this way. And they are drinking the Koolaid.
Can it be that the segment of world Jewry that is growing the fastest in exponential numbers each generation - the mainstream of Judaism ending up like a cult?
I don’t know but I hope not. Many of us believe that the ‘chickens will come home to roost.’ The current trajectory will eventually change as Charedim begin to realize just how dangerously far off the path they have gone. They will return to some semblance of normalcy and once again become more reality oriented. I hope that’s true. But if these increased protests are indicative of the trend, they have a long way to go.
