https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/religion-science-coronavirus
It’s of little surprise, then, that the main flag on view during the Haredi protests last week was the Gadsden flag. Don’t Tread on Me, that quintessentially American cri de coeur, is, these days, primarily the domain of the Haredi community. Everywhere else in the Jewish world, the slogans recited are the confused and exhausted and meaningless truisms of nice liberals who can’t or don’t care to explain the staggering contradictions, violations, hypocrisies, and usurpations committed with their tacit support.
Flatten the curve, wear a mask, close the shuls—all were accepted without too much attention to detail or rationale and without asking what, in effect, we’re risking when we sign away so many of our freedoms to officials who seem to have nothing but the vaguest grasp on science and democracy alike. There’s nothing less Jewish, or less American, than that. The Haredim understand that by succumbing to the tyranny of illogic, the sort that restricts attendance regardless of the size of the venue or deems one form of gathering acceptable but not another, all will be lost. To surrender thusly would be a total disruption of their Jewish and American way of life. Their critics, sadly, prefer instead to worship at a very different altar, sanctifying their leftist bona fides and reverence to leaders from the correct political party rather than asking hard but obvious questions. What we see in Brooklyn these days, then, is nothing less than a religious war, in which the Haredim, in a delicious twist of fate, have actual science on their side. Here’s hoping they prevail.
BY LIEL LEIBOVITZ
OCTOBER 15, 2020