America is far from being the only country where religious fundamentalists are being obstructive over measures to control the coronavirus pandemic currently killing millions, and putting the public at risk rather than be deprived of their assumed privilege to do what they want, when, where and how they want, without regard for the health and welfare of others.
Readers may recall my article of a few days ago about the ultra-Orthodox Jewish Charedi community that was routinely breaking the Covid-19 lockdown regulations by holding clandestine mass weddings with 300+ guests, some of whom were known to have tested coronavirus positive, in a local girls' school in Stamford Hill, London. That story had been broken by Jewish News and prompted prominent Jewish barrister, Daniel Greenberg, to condemn the organisers in blunt terms with:
Those who have attended illicit weddings under lockdown represent a self-indulgent sect that should be disowned by the rest of the Jewish world...
But the reality is that this is just a new emergence of something that many of us have known known or suspected for some time, and which now perhaps needs to be articulated clearly and publicly: much of the lifestyle for many Charedi communities is completely incompatible with the fundamental principles of Judaism...
It is time for the rest of the Jewish community to disown those individuals publicly and allow them to go their own mad and dangerous way, and turn to the task of publicly representing a more balanced approach to Jewish practice as being the real continuation of the Jewish heritage in all meaningful ways.
One of the messages currently doing the rounds in Stamford Hill. |
Another calls on shops to stop stocking Jewish News and the Jewish Chronicle. |
One message states:
Boycut [sic] the Jewish News and the JC.A second, almost equally illiterate message, which moves over into intimidatory threats, reads:
Spreading Hate [sic] to the Public [sic] on Jews.
No one [sic] is defending those who break the covid rules but Jews should not be spreading News [sic] articles which will create Public [sic] hate on All [sic] Jews.
All Shops [sic] that stack [sic] the JC and JewishNews [sic] should decline any future deliverys [sic] for good.The author appears to be unaware that wanton disregard for the health and welfare of the greater community and demanding the special privilege to put the health and welfare of others at risk rather than comply with the rules and delay celebrations until later, is what causes inter-communal strife and distrust.
They need to get shut for our good. Any shop that will have it, we will have the names notified to the Public [sic] too.
We are in this together.
You want save lives, good stuff [sic] but to share & spread hate will not stop anything but the oppsite [sic], will force everything go underground [sic] and make millions of people hate Jews!
Exposing the criminal activities of criminals is not an act of hate, nor is calling on the criminals to have regard for their moral obligations to the rest of us and act responsibly towards the community at large. It is the crime itself and the disregard for the welfare of others which is hateful.
Jewish News claims to have had reports that copies of Jewish Chronicle, on sale in Stamford Hill, have been withdrawn from the shops.
Although numbers are falling now, following another lockdown, the UK has so far recorded 3,852,623 people who have tested positive for the coronavirus, with a peak of over 80,000 new cases on 29th December, 2020. So far, 108,013 people in the UK have died of Covid-19, reaching a peak of 1,820 on 20 January, 2021. The London area has been especially hard hit.
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