Donald Trump (unintentionally) praises Joe Biden – The Satmar congregation’s abortive wedding celebration – The Hasids’ undeserved reputation for tradition – Common traits of fundamentalist religious movements, Christian and Jewish alike – Evening statistics
I hesitate to write any more about Donald Trump when I’ve already urged so much against him. I want this account to be a blog of life generally as it is while being affected by the ramifications of the COVID virus, not a political diatribe. There are plenty of those directed at Trump as it is.
But still . . .
What can he possibly be thinking at times? In a recent attempt to belittle his opponent he made the dire claim that Biden would “listen to scientists” when making policies to combat the effects of the virus. It’s as if he’s channeling the spirit of the prophet Balaam, intending to curse but uttering a blessing against his will. He must know that one of the chief criticisms against him at this point is that he allowed the virus to spin out of control by ignoring the advice of the most prominent immunologists, and now he has tacitly admitted that his critics are correct. Biden, of course, happily concurred with this statement, not bothering to conceal his delight at the praise his opponent inadvertently bestowed upon him.
I have written a great deal about the evangelical Christians, for the most part criticizing them severely, so it is only fair that I direct my attention to another group of fundamentalists: namely, the Hasidic Jews. The Satmar congregation had planned a celebration of their rabbi’s grandson that would, if it had gone through, have been attended by 10,000 people. New York State Health Commissioner Howard Zucker lost no time in signing a Section 16 order barring the event. Governor Cuomo had issued an executive order earlier this month that limits gatherings in houses of worship in New York City neighborhoods that have seen spikes in Covid-19 cases, including several with large Orthodox Jewish communities. The order limits gatherings to no more than 25% capacity or a maximum of 10 people in red zone clusters, while those in the orange zone can operate at up to 33% capacity with a maximum of 25 people. Houses of worship in a yellow zone may operate at up to 50% capacity. Clearly, an event with 10,000 attendees would greatly exceed this limit, no matter how large the house of worship might be. Amazingly, the organizers backed down. The Orthodox Jews – in New York, at any rate – have been just as recalcitrant in disregarding such regulations as their fundamentalist Christian counterparts, and as a result the counties in which they are concentrated have a COVID test positivity rate of 5.5%, more than five times the state’s average.
There is a widespread impression that the Hasidic Jews with their long sidelocks and uniform of gabardines are the “real” Jews, the ones with the strongest links to past traditions. That impression is false: Hasidic Judaism as we know it today is a recent development. (In fairness it must be admitted the word “recent” when applied to a people with 3,000 years of recorded history may seem like a fairly long time to some.) Israel ben Eliezer, the Baal Shem Tov and founder of the Hasidic movement, flourished in the first half of the 18th century and he probably would have disapproved of some of the developments that occurred after his death – the institution of rabbinic dynasties, for example. At all events, the Hasids are newcomers in the history of Judaism in the same way that Methodists are newcomers in the history of Christianity – and, interestingly, Israel ben Eliezer and John Wesley are near contemporaries. It is doubtful that either one of them even heard of the other, but they were both strongly affected by the Romantic movement that was emerging during their lifetimes and incorporated many of the ideas from that movement into their systems of religious belief. They certainly injected a new vitality into the religious institutions of their day, but they each represent as much a break from tradition as anything else. Jews in earlier times, for example, did not have a distinctive dress, unless they were compelled to wear one by a hostile state; they probably were somewhat more relaxed about the dietary laws and restrictions on Sabbath activities; and the rabbis among them were expected to be self-supporting..
There is another trait that these religious movements have in common: in the long run they created more obstacles than avenues to the betterment of the lives of ordinary people. Initially they offered a vigorous reaction, indeed a rebuke, to the harsh insensitivity of pre-democratic Europe to the needs and claims of the common man. But their glamorization of ignorance and superstition, their fostering of a tiny priestly upper class at the expense of everyone else in the congregations, and their hostility to developments in scientific advances condemned their followers to a backward, closed-in, marginal existence, frequently mired in impoverished circumstances with no hope of melioration. We certainly see these trends in the fundamentalist religious movements today.
Having, as I do not doubt, condemned myself to eternal perdition in the eyes of any religious fundamentalist who chances to read this, I move on to the daily statistics as of 8:00 PM:
# of cases worldwide: 40,639,083; # of deaths worldwide: 1,122,932; # of cases U.S.: 8,456,653; # of deaths U.S.: 225,222.