By Rabbi Yair Hoffman for 5tjt.com
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It was the first day of school for two girls from different schools – school A and School B. One young girl, upon hearing how rigid school A was about masks and social distancing, remarked, “Wow! Our school was not like that at all!”
She continued, “In our school [school B], if you want to wear a mask you can – but you don’t have to. If you want to social distance, you can – but you don’t have to.”
Let us, for a moment, enter the minds of the CPM of each school [CPM is an acronym for COVID Policy Maker]. Let us peer into what, perhaps, they may be thinking. It may not necessarily be correct, but for the purposes of this discussion – let us assume it is. So this is what they, or some other CPMs, may be thinking:
School B CPM: “Look, we cannot make our children and parents crazy. This is all political. No one is really dying anymore. Watch, the day after the election, all this COVID craziness will end. And besides – kids don’t really get it. It is all overblown. Of course, I cannot say so publicly, because I want to keep my job and the mask-wearing, social distance loonies, will have my head. So, I will just adopt a “if you want to you can policy, if you don’t want to – it’s fine policy.”
School A CPM: “I cannot believe how crazy and utterly irresponsible our community has become. Don’t they realize that our shuls, our schools, and our weddings are Ground Zero for the second COVID wave we are experiencing right now?!? Did they forget what just happened a few months ago? I am not going to let this to happen to our school! We are going to have rigid compliance. True, it will be hard – near impossible, but we must remove the lax attitude and I will do my best!”
MEGILAS ESTHER
We now temporarily switch to an analysis of the fourth chapter of Megilas Esther.
Esther sends Hatach to Mordechai, in the city square in front of the king’s gate. Mordechai tells Hatach all that happened, all about the Franklins that Haman promised to pay to the king for the right to destroy the Jews. He also gives him a copy of the law proclaimed in Shushan calling for their annihilation, to show Esther and to tell her about it.
He instructs her to go to the king to beg and plead with him on behalf of Klal Yisroel. Hatach does so.
Esther tells Hatach to tell Mordechai, “Everyone knows that any man or woman who goes to the king and enters the inner courtyard without being summoned, his is but one verdict: execution; except for the person to whom the king extends his golden scepter – only he shall live. I have not been summoned to come to the king for thirty days now.”
Mordechai responds harshly to Esther: “Do not think that you will escape the fate of all the Jews by being in the king’s palace. For if you will remain silent at this time, relief and salvation will come to the Jews from another source, and you and the house of your father will be lost. And who knows if it is not for just such a time that you reached this royal position.”
TWO FORCES HASHEM PUT IN THE WORLD
Pain is actually a good thing. Let us look at the pain of something that is burning hot. We accidentally touch something that is hot – because of the intense pain – we immediately remove our hand from it. This can save us from the blister that the body forms to cover the injury while, the white blood cells come to fight off the bacteria while the new layer of skin is grown from the edges of the burn. It also saves us from the need for skin grafts in case the new skin can’t form quickly enough. It also saves us from the loss of mobility that happens when the body makes the wound smaller with the scar tissue formed.
Pain also brings us to the dentist. A small cavity is filled thus saving the tooth, preventing a root canal and, yes, possibly saving us from a heart infection too.
Pain is a chessed Hashem. And just as pain is a chessed Hashem – so too is the emotional pain of guilt. Guilt is a chessed Hashem that helps us do the right thing. It helps motivate us to call our mothers, it helps motivate us to help out those who are suffering. It helps us put the needs of others before our own.
But, sometimes, guilt can stay. Since we do not want to be in pain – that is where the self-deception comes in. “No,” we begin to think in order to assuage our guilt. “She deserved it. I didn’t say anything particularly mean. I was right and do not have to feel guilty about it.” Self-deception is a means in which we can deal with the repercussions of paralyzing and devastating guilt.
Is self-deception a bad thing? Yes, and no. We find in the Gemorah in Brachos (28a) that Rabban Gamliel was given a false vision or dream – in order to calm him down. When he was temporarily replaced as the Rosh Yeshiva of the academy – an incredible uptick in Torah learning took place. Rabban Gamliel was racked with guilt. Were his rigid policies responsible for the prevention of so much Torah learning?
PLUGGING IT BACK IN
Let us say, Chalilah, that our school B CPM was, in fact, wrong. If, chalilah, a child got COVID-19 because of his or her lax policy and subsequently gave Granny COVID – which caused her early demise – will he or she feel bad about it? Someone once explained that the whole parsha of Eglah Arufah was created by the Torah to sensitize ourselves of our responsibility for the welfare of others – but to do so in a manner that is not psychologically paralyzing. Is our quick dismissal of our own error because of self-deception warranted? If we engage in self-deception too early – that can be a very bad thing. On the other hand, we see from the Gemorah in Brachos 28a that it is sometimes necessary in order to allow people to function.
By the same token, let us say imagine that our school A CPM was wrong and that he or she was responsible for causing a] widespread anxiety and depression and b] seriously hampering the learning of both Torah and lehavdil secular education. Would he or she feel guilty? Or would incorrect self-deception kick in?
[This author personally believes that CPM of school A is correct in that – although children may not be getting a serious form of COVID – the grannies, grandpas, and the immune-compromised are being placed at risk. Aside from that we are fulfilling numerous Mitzvos by exercising extreme caution.]
Getting back to self-deception – the correct thought process is as follows: “Look, I believe that I did err in regard to how I handled X, Y, or Z. I feel bad about it and wish to do Teshuvah to correct what was wrong in my thinking so that it will not happen again. Nonetheless, I will not destroy and paralyze myself in guilt because we are all human. I will have enough guilt to get me to do the right thing and to change for the future – but not to paralyze and devastate me. We have a loving Father who wants our Teshuvah. And if we do Teshuva b’ahava, it will be even counted as a Mitzvah!”
The author can be reached at [email protected]
Wishing Rabbi Hoffman ksiva v’chasima tova, gezunt, gezunt, gezunt!
B’mecilas k’vod harav, I beg to differ. Let’s suppose a kid in school caught the flu from another boy (who came to school with mild symptoms) and then when his symptoms began (mildly), he unknowingly gave it to grandma, who had an early demise as a result (flu when severe kills people, especially older people, like about 60,000 yearly in the US). Is there any guilt here?
RABBI HOFFMAN RESPONDS: YRS. THIS IS SOMETHING THAT COULD HAVE BEEN AVOIDED. IT IS CALLED GRAM MISAH. THERE IS GUILT MOST CERTAINLY.
The facts on the ground about COVID are scattered and few, but after six months we do have some statistical evidence about its transmission, pathology, and so on. We, the Monday-morning quarterbacks, can feel or believe anything we want to, but there are keepers of statistics whose findings can help us do the best thing. The “advice” these keepers of statistics offer without statistical evidence is worthless, as we have seen with the CDC and WHO getting it wrong and doing obviously politically motivated things now and then (like WHO “covering up” for China, etc). But their reports of statistics are reliable, because statistics don’t lie.
So when we read that both WHO and CDC have found that statistically, people who are asymptotic rarely transmit it (you can read it on their websites),
RABBI HOFFMAN RESPONDS: YES, THEY RETRACTED. SEE ALSO Harvard Global Health Institute: “All of the best evidence suggests that people without symptoms can and do readily spread SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. In fact, some evidence suggests that people may be most infectious in the days before they become symptomatic — that is, in the presymptomatic phase when they feel well, have no symptoms, but may be shedding substantial amounts of virus.”
and we read that statistically, children don’t typically get the disease from each other asymptomatically (something we saw the entire summer as both day and sleepaway camps functioned quite well), we can make sane and rational decisions based on these statistical findings. So School A, while they certainly are entitled to operate however they like, are following their fear (personal and litigational, perhaps), while School B have used rational thought and observation to reach their conclusions.
RABBI HOFFMAN: THIS IS NOT WHAT THE DOCTORS ARE TELLING US IN ANY SHAPE, MANNER OR FORM – NOR EPIDEMIOLOGISTS, NOR THE STATISTICIANS..
Respectfully,
H M
H M has absorbed all the wishful thinking that is mistaken for facts of those who don’t want to restrict themselves. He repeats all the nonsense as if it was true. Just another case delusional following the deluded.
Rabbi Hoffman, Shlit”a,
The CDC did not retract their recommendation that one who is exposed to COVID need not isolate if he/she is asymptomatic. They also did not retract their recommendation that one who tests positive but is asymptomatic need not cause others in contact with him/her to isolate. They go by the statistics, which indicate that asymptomatic people “rarely” spread the disease (you can read it on their website). The WHO also did not retract that statement, they just commented in an interview that it’s a complicated issue.
You are of course correct that in the case of the flu I mentioned that there may be a halachic issue of “gram misa b’shogeg”, but my point was that no school will institute policies to deal with this, like isolation or anything like it.
There are 1000s of doctors that disagree with the Rabbi. Many don’t verbalize it out of fear of losing their license. A doctor in Minnesota was threatened by the medical board for publicly expressing his beliefs that the virus is not as fatal as the flu. We know this because the mortality rate is .26% unlike last years flu which was 7%. Stop the fear mongering!
Seriously? No, there is no reason to feel guilty if a safety measure turns out to be unnecessary. Do you beat yourself up every time you drive with your children in the car and don’t get into an accident, because you put them through the unnecessary discomfort of wearing a seatbelt?