As a few op/eds defending covid-flouting haredim straggle out of the gate, UD makes it a point to read them all.

They run the gamut from completely nuts to completely nuts.

UD has to read them for you because she knows you won’t read them. And why won’t you? Let us count the ways.

It’s just a few primitifs scattered here and there in the world… Maybe you saw Unorthodox and you know they treat their women like shit, but ladeedah… there but for the grace of god full stop. You’re vaguely aware welfare fraud rages and yeah ok their schools are a national disgrace but meh. The world is full of problems. Viewed from an anthropological lens, these people are certainly… interesting…

Oh, and here’s the most important reason of all. Play it again, Sam.

It is taboo in our society to criticize a person’s religious faith… these taboos are offensive, deeply unreasonable, but worse than that, they are getting people killed. This is really my concern. My concern is that our religions, the diversity of our religious doctrines, is going to get us killed. I’m worried that our religious discourse – our religious beliefs – are ultimately incompatible with civilization.

Even when social practices are getting us killed, we don’t criticize them because they’re religious. Thus, indignant defenders of the haredim point out that these people live in appallingly substandard conditions, packed into tiny apartments without access to televisions, computers, or any news of the outside world, and that they get all of their instructions for how to live every aspect of their lives from a rabbi. These writers seem to believe that they are successfully arguing that since the haredim’s creation of some of the world’s hottest viral zones is simply an epiphenomenon of their faith, we are vicious anti-religionists to criticize them. But listen up, O Israel:

Haredi insularity, Haredi disregard for health authorities during a pandemic, Haredi poverty and population density — all the factors that render them especially vulnerable to the virus, and through them everyone else — are ultimately a choice. There are no external or environmental factors forcing Haredim into their isolation and poverty, only their own cultural and religious commitments. They are therefore not only victims of their current circumstances, but also perpetrators, in the full light of day and of scientific warning.

Rich countries like America and Israel have been rich enough to ignore/appease/tolerate ways of life belligerently at odds with everything modern democratic states stand for; but now that the anti-empirical, anti-state position of the haredim is literally killing us, something surely has to be done. No more bullshit about how it’s only a radical minority within a minority – that obviously doesn’t matter anymore. No more bullshit about how if you’re nice to them eventually they’ll assimilate more and more to normal society. No – as Sam Harris and Haviv Rettig Gur point out, these people believe what they believe, and it ain’t just ideas — it’s salvation.

In the full light of day, to quote Gur, socially destructive ultraorthodox practices must be exposed. We have to stop looking away.