The Coronavirus and Haredi Children – An Educable Moment? Dr. Nancy Hartevelt Kobrin

By Dr. Nancy Hartevelt Kobrin

I was reminded of a scene out of the 1985 movie Witness about an 8 year old Amish boy who, after witnessing a murder, is swept up into the modern world. In one scene the little boy is in a public toilet with his father who is dressed in traditional black Amish garb. While the child looks at the confused crowd of strangers, he sees a Haredi Ultra-Orthodox Jew, dressed in his black austere religious garb. The little boy tries to make sense out of this other man and to find where he “fits” into the scheme of things. 
 
It was said then that the outward similarity was an illusion and there was a real difference in substance. Yet, the analogy fails to take into account the internal experience of the young Amish boy and those of religious Jews.  Both groups—Amish and Jewish–have very different internal worlds which are rich, deep and complex. Their distinct historical heritages influence the fantasies and emotions that link conscious thoughts and worldviews and, for each individual, to the internal view of his or her private evolving sense of self. 
 
Psychologists teach us that children tend to “read between the lines” when they begin to have contact with the world beyond their mother and the family. As they go into other peoples’ homes, they wonder – what is really going on here? How similar or different is this place from mine? How are these other children treated – like me or not? There is a myriad of unspoken questions that arise when a child soaks up the strange environment like a sponge in an attempt to figure out the world and to try to feel safe in it.
 
 
Right now, as we all experience the worldwide coronavirus pandemic, this “reading between the lines” is churning around in the minds of Haredi children in Jerusalem, especially in B’nai Brak and many other Haredi enclaves in Israel. These young minds tragically encounter the trauma of the Coronavirus or what has been referred to as the “Haredi Hurricane Katrina” http://www.middleisrael.net/_ultra_orthodox_katrina_10_apr_20_/. Indeed, these children may have already overheard their parents talking about children of their Jewish relatives in New York City who are mourning their parents, as reported on Haredi websites:
 
Much learned discussion about how the Haredi communities in America and Israel will be changed by this experience has tended to focus on three areas – technology, obedience to rabbis and the economy/labor market, cf. https://en.idi.org.il/articles/31256.
 
According to the Times of Israel: “The virus’s real effect may come piecemeal, overtime and as a part of a broader shift in the Haredi culture. It is no earthquake, but could it be a tipping point?” https://www.timesofisrael.com/more-basic-than-a-crisis-of-faith-will-the-virus-upend-ultra-orthodox-society/. At the very least, for any child a crisis like this, is in fact, a psychological earthquake. Might such children find themselves referring to each other as Corona survivors, in a similar way Holocaust survivors’ children refer to themselves as first second and third generation? It’s a distinct possibility. Moreover, and ironically, many are also of the Holocaust generations for the Haredim were nearly wiped out during the war along with their yeshivas, houses of study. While undoubtedly many will unfortunately experience the psychological sequelae and re-traumatization from the Coronavirus’ impact on their tight-knit communities, there is one positive possibility for change that has not been mentioned so far. To the best of my knowledge, no one has mentioned the impact of the presence of members of the Israel Defense Force who have at least fleeting personal contact with the community and its children. Thus, the outside world has been intimately let in under the Coronavirus. The floodgates seem to be opening.
 
As a psychoanalyst, I have no question that Haredi children are trying to make sense out of what is going on as they digest all that they are seeing, hearing and feeling. Haredi children, many of whom live below the poverty line and in crowded quarters, have been taught to call IDF soldiers Nazis.  Ignorance and fear among adults has been passed on to their generation. Suddenly, however, the boys and girls see the Israeli soldiers in a new light, as potential helpers bringing them food, supplies and helping the sick in their families. Their worldview is surely undergoing a profound alteration. 
 
When a child lives below the poverty line and is not given the right to a core curriculum that educates them for the modern world, he or she is left with many unmet psychological needs. For this reason, these Israeli soldiers are unwittingly helping these children ease the anxieties that exist all around them and soothe the particular worries that they absorb through their parents’ eyes and feel in the unspoken emotional terrain of the family and the neighborhood. Naftali Moster has worked tirelessly in New York through his organization Yaffed to insist upon a modern curriculum for the Haredim, https://www.yaffed.org
 
Recently I had the privilege of volunteering with Sar-el, https://www.sar-el.org, in a group that was sent to Tzrifim (Bahad-16), the IDF’s Home Front Command (Pikud HaOref) . Having met these expert soldiers who deal with disaster and knowing too that paratroopers from Battalion 890 and commando brigades of the 98th Division have been deployed to the Haredi hotspots, not only do I feel it was a wise strategic move to contain the virus but I also understand it to be a profound psychological encounter between the secular world and the Haredi, https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-israeli-soldiers-are-sure-they-re-saving-this-ultra-orthodox-coronavirus-hot-spot-1.8750121. The traumatic memories that these Haredi kids hold may well be tempered by witnessing acts of loving-kindness from the “other,” the Israeli soldiers.  For the first time in many of their young lives, they are meeting Jews of all different religious persuasions, from Reform all the way to Modern and Ultra-Orthodox , even secular along with Druze, Christian and Muslim, men and women serving together as Israeli soldiers. It is an educable moment, one that the IDF has wisely seized upon.
 
But what went wrong in the Haredi world that made their very own rabbis and the Minister of Health, a Haredi himself, fail to take the coronavirus pandemic seriously until word reached them from New York where many of their own co-religionists were dying? It is all the more curious, considering that the Haredim on the whole do understand science and are knowledgeable about the significant Jewish medieval medical traditions from Spain and the Middle East. There are even contemporary rebbes (rabbis) who have written tractates on science. https://www.timesofisrael.com/more-basic-than-a-crisis-of-faith-will-the-virus-upend-ultra-orthodox-society/  
 
So why did they fail to listen to authorities for precious weeks during the initial global outbreak? I wrote in a previous piece on emotionally religious populations here https://itct.org.uk/archives/itct_article/the-danger-of-the-coronavirus-in-emotionally-religious-populations that they were in deep denial and retreated into their insular religious world for comfort. What I write now is also applicable to all religious faiths that are so deeply entrenched in their traditions that they failed to see the handwriting on the wall with regard to the Coronavirus. In Christian or Muslim communities, of course, the details of denial will be different. Here I address a few of the salient issues with regard to the Haredi population in Israel in relationship to the Israeli Defense Force.
 
Denial is a curious psychological defense born out of the early childhood experience with the mother during the attachment phase. My colleague Norman Simms and I have written a monograph concerning in part the issue of denial. (Due out in November 2020 as a free download at MentalitiesJournal.com).  Denial carries over into adulthood in profound ways such as we have just witnessed with the Haredi rebbes who didn’t listen to the warnings about Covid-19.  This failure is part of what has been called the attachment effect (Lovenheim, 2018) encountered most especially in association with charismatic leadership and a group mentality that remains too frightened to question.  Is the Haredi rebbe only an emperor wearing invisible clothes? Denial is a defensive strategy to protect the fragile under-developed self from its terrors that run deep. These powerful emotions arise from unmet psychological needs – especially the need to be experienced other than as an object to another person.
 
Lest we forget, even these Haredi rebbes who failed their own community members were by and large raised in social seclusion and poverty and thus have their own residual anxieties of unattended psychological needs, unconscious needs that fed into and constructed a highly defensive narcissistic grandiose stance. They, too, are of the survivor generations of the Holocaust. Because of denial over these past several weeks, many Haredim have died. This tragedy is still in process for Haredi children. However, the eyes of these children have been opened wide and their reality has been profoundly changed by the IDF soldiers who are helping. This is a window of opportunity for all of us to open the discussion as to how to improve the living conditions for these frightened children by providing them better educational opportunities, better living environments along with psychological help. 
 
By the year 2065, it is predicted that 49% of Israeli children will be Haredim https://www.jewishpress.com/news/israel/report-by-2065-49-of-israeli-children-will-be-haredi-so-who-will-go-to-work/2019/11/12/. We need to deal with these children now who will become the next generation so that they will be more engaged, active fully-functioning citizens for the betterment of society. Just like the observation concerning the Amish boy and the Haredi man in the movie scene out of Witness, we have to ask ourselves: Is it all surface and no substance? Can there be a way to maintain cultural differences and yet live peacefully and cooperatively in a shared world or nation? The coronavirus crisis encourages us to take a deep dive into the psychological problems haunting the Haredi communities as well as Israeli society at large. It’s a rare opportunity for change that we all should not be afraid to embrace.
Nancy Hartevelt Kobrin

Nancy Hartevelt Kobrin

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