Given that the priorities of public health and Haredi leaders are not in opposition…
Uh, yes they are. Examine long-standing haredi attitudes toward vaccines too, if you’d like. And the physical treatment of women and children. Plus hey: No education in science plus patriarchal prudery equals raising people who don’t understand their bodies and how to keep them alive.
Public health authorities and Haredi religious leaders have seen that the price of not collaborating effectively is tragically high…
No they haven’t. The authorities didn’t have to see this, because they already knew, having been educated in history and empiricism. They had no need to ‘see’ the tragic price this go ’round because they are familiar with the tragic price paid in, I don’t know, the bubonic plague era.
As for the haredim (Why does the writer speak exclusively of haredi leadership, by the way? Have ordinary ultraorthodox Jews no independent agency? If they don’t – if the modern state of Israel has generated a large, growing minority of people who are completely passive morally – then the problem of coronavirus infection in Israel is really just an itty bitty problem.), like a lot of ignorant cults they don’t see avoidable death as tragic but as one of many mysterious divine blessings.