Back to Search
Start Over
Torah Trumps Life: Reflections on Uncivil Religion and Haredi Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic.
- Source :
- Religions; Jul2023, Vol. 14 Issue 7, p946, 18p
- Publication Year :
- 2023
-
Abstract
- As if by design, crisis reveals basic structural fault lines. In the middle of the COVID-19 crisis, non-Haredi Jews expressed surprise and even outrage about the ultra-orthodox Haredi response to the pandemic. It was not understood how large-scale violations of public health protocols comported with the legal-halakhic principle of Pikuaḥ Nefesh (saving human life). In this essay, I explore Hasidic response to COVID-19 as reported in the secular and Haredi press and in emergent social science literature about this crisis. I place Haredi response to crisis in relation to the clash between two sets of values: the value of saving human life and the value of intensive Talmud study (talmud Torah) and ritual-communal practice. In what Robert Cover called a paideic nomos, there are more important things than human life. What we see already in the Babylonian Talmud is the profound ambiguity of paideic norms vis-à-vis the larger public good. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 20771444
- Volume :
- 14
- Issue :
- 7
- Database :
- Complementary Index
- Journal :
- Religions
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 169710117
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14070946