Yehuda Meshi-Zahav, the ultra-Orthodox head of the Zaka search and rescue group, tells Channel 12 news that he is ashamed by the behavior of some in his community when it comes to coronavirus health guidelines, but notes that not all Haredim are the same.
“It’s shameful as a community and as a people,” he says. “I understand the anger of secular people… people saying: You are infecting us, 20 percent infecting 80%. And you’re stealing the ventilators.”
ZAKA head, Rabbi Yehuda Meshi-Zahav, on February 4, 2010. (Yaakov Naumi/Flash90)
He says there is “huge confusion” about what’s going on among the Haredim.
According to Meshi-Zahav, the mainstream Hasidic sects are keeping all the rules. He claims that some of the issues come from some Hasidic sects like Vizhnitz and Belz who have decided to try to get herd immunity rather than “disturb the world of Torah,” on the advice of their rabbis. Some “want to get infected,” he says.
He advises that Israeli authorities can get through to these communities by speaking to rabbinical leaders and not by using force.
Haredi Jews attend the funeral of the Pittsburgher Rebbe Mordechai Leifer in the Israeli city of Ashdod on October 5, 2020. (Flash90)
Most of the most egregious behavior, he says, comes from the hard-line anti-Zionist groups such as the Eda Haredit and Toldot Aharon, which are deliberately flouting the rules and trying to sow division.
“They want pictures” of cops hitting kids, to show their communities and pump up hatred of secular Israelis.
“They want to deepen the gulf between the ultra-Orthodox and Israeli-ness,” he says. “It doesn’t have to be this way.”
