The COVID era has been a "fun" time for researchers of religion, and even more so for those who study the Haredi society, whose outright rejection of modernism is tied to the working assumption that modernism equals secularism. Among other things, the challenging COVID era is showing us that we have reached a new stage of the already fraught battle between medicine and faith, between Torah and science.
In the old world, there was already tension between the strength of a person's faith in God and the obligation to seek medical treatment. Famously, the Ramban asked why a person of faith should seek a doctor's help, a question we hear repeated today.
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The second stage of the modern era, after the scientific revolution – which is an important chapter in the secularist revolution – heightened that tension. Science pushed religion back, not only in terms of religious "truths" such as the earth being the center of the solar system, but the very status of religious figures as people who had the answers to existential questions.
In the third stage, the Zionist revolution ramped up the conflict. This is an exciting development within Jewish society: the prestige of Torah study was intended to fill an important role in holding the Haredi world up against a huge challenge, the appearance of the secular Jewish pioneer, the secular Jewish IDF combat soldier who defends their people and their homeland. To keep Torah scholar's image from being damaged when compared to these figures, and facing what could be interpreted as the intellectual superiority of the secular work in general and the benefits of life-saving science in particular, there was a need to bolster the status of Torah study and Torah scholars.
So we saw a growing ethos of the prestige of Torah study and efforts to present yeshiva boys as the defenders of the Jewish people, no less than and possibly even more than IDF soldiers.
Incidentally, that ethos began to strengthen back in the 18th and 19th centuries after another crisis: the fight to maintain the status of scholarship in the face of the irrational charm of Hassidism. Paradoxically, to defend against the mystical Hassidic threat and uphold an intellectual approach to Torah study as the superior experience, it was necessary to mysticize Torah study itself and present it as a way of protecting the entire cosmos.
Now we are at the fourth stage, soaring heavenward under the unique leadership of Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, the foremost teacher and mystic, who issues instructions based on mysticism rather than rationale, like other leaders. The conflict is becoming clearer: it's no longer "faith vs. medicine," or "religion vs. science," or even "Torah scholars vs. IDF soldiers." All these were philosophical battles waged on religious grounds. Now there are practical aspects. Rabbi Kanievsky is putting things to the test: in the first wave, it appeared that mysticism had been defeated. Kanievsky put out a message that the Torah protects and saves us, and orders were issued to ignore public health regulations about COVID. But then Bnei Brak became a hotbed of infection, and IDF generals were called in to save the embarrassed Haredim.
In the second wave, Kanievsky once again issued instructions to ignore the government regulations and go back to Torah study, which would save everyone.
The prevailing assumption was that the Haredi cities would experience a third wave and turn "red" quickly. That didn't happen. The way the Haredim see it, the opposite occurred. The more the Haredim flouted COVID regulations, the more the numbers of new cases in that sector dropped. The Torah had defeated science. It could be that this is a turning point, for good or ill, in the battle between rationalism and mysticism.
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