8 Reasons Why Some in the Hareidi Community Ignore Guidelines

By Rabbi Yair Hoffman for 5tjt.com

A number of people aren’t too happy with some members of the Hareidi Jewish community these days.  The reason is that they appear to be throwing all logic out the window in terms of flouting Covid guidelines. The reaction should be to ask three questions:

Why are they doing it? How can we understand the mindset?  And most importantly, how best can it be addressed?

BACK TO 1846

To understand them, we need to travel back to 1846, to Vienna General Hospital’s Maternity Ward.  Vienna General Hospital was a center of medical research at the time and housed the Viennese Medical School.  In the Maternity Ward, numerous women were dying of Puerperal group A streptococcal infections.  But no one knew why.

But then a young Hungarian doctor, Ignaz Semmelweis, eventually discovered why.  The doctors were not washing their hands properly.  He recommended that they wash their hands with a disinfectant – chlorine, and voila – the dying stopped.

The other doctors were not happy with Semmelweis.  His theory pretty much implicated them as the culprits.  And what happened?  The doctors stopped using the Chlorine and they got Semmelweis fired.

Surprisingly, the situation hasn’t quite resolved in close to 175 years.  According to the CDC, improper handwashing is the biggest source of hospital borne infections.  One hundred thousand people die each year because of hospital borne infections.  Why don’t nurses and other hospital staff listen – including doctors?

The reasons are a combination of factors.

• Firstly, the idea of invisible germs being on our hands is naturally counter-intuitive, as is the idea of having to wear masks and socially distance.
• Secondly, both are a pain to properly observe. Washing hands properly when working in a hospital setting requires some 200 washings in an eight-hour shift.  Not attending weddings or funerals is very difficult for people as well.
• Thirdly, there is the idea of “It’s only the other guy who gets it, not me.”
• Fourthly, there is the, “How dare you blame us!” factor – which can cause an opposite reaction.
• Finally, there is the distrust factor. Nurses, believe it or not, often do not trust doctors.  And Hareidim do not trust medical authorities.

All of these five factors combine to create some serious non-compliance among a number of people in both of these communities – the medical community in terms of hand-washing and the Hareidi community in social distancing and mask wearing.

There are three additional factors that apply to the Hareidi-Covid response as well.

• The first is that many assume that they already got COVID and are immune.
• The second is the perception that the secular medical authorities don’t know what they are doing anyway. Yes masks. No masks. There is no clear unified message.
• Finally, the third factor is the need for self-autonomy. “We do not want you messing with our business, because invariably you will overreach and affect what is crucially important to us.

There is one difference:  There is also an underlying antipathy that the Hareidi community faces, whereas the other one does not.   As a community, we get our jollies pointing out the faults of those who are more religious than us.  That’s why Halloween parties will often feature pregnant nuns.  That’s why we have memes comparing poppy seed cakes to Hareidi funerals and challenging others whether they can distinguish between the two.

The hate is so palpable that if one did a simple “search and replace” where one exchanges Hareidi with black people – on an article discussing Hareidim – it looks straight Ku Klux Klan literature.

What needs to be done is to put our collective heads together to figure out how best to counteract these eight factors in order to save lives and not cause further alienation between the Torah community and others around us.   The manner in which businesses deal with these issues is instructive.

I recall some thirty years ago, people in Monsey were taking the phones off the hook every Erev Shabbos.  This caused great interruptions to the phone company.  How did they deal with it?  They took out ads in Yiddish explaining possible alternatives.

A similar approach could help save lives here as well.  What needs to be done is to get some creative people together who are aware of the reasons for non-compliance.  They should try to figure out strategies in which to approach the problem.  In this way we can get to saving lives and stopping the internal bickering.

The author can be reached at [email protected]