Debate on Uman should be about health, not belief - analysis

This is about only one question: Is it smart in the time of a pandemic for tens of thousands of Israelis to travel to a redzone country?

By HERB KEINON
Ultra-Orthodox Jewish pilgrims pray on a bank of a lake near the tomb of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov during the celebration of Rosh Hashanah holiday, the Jewish New Year, in Uman, Ukraine, September 21, 2017. (photo credit: REUTERS)
Ultra-Orthodox Jewish pilgrims pray on a bank of a lake near the tomb of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov during the celebration of Rosh Hashanah holiday, the Jewish New Year, in Uman, Ukraine, September 21, 2017.
(photo credit: REUTERS)
In the current, overheated debate concerning the pilgrimage of tens of thousands of people to Rabbi Nachman of Breslov’s grave in Uman on Rosh Hashana, one main thing has been lost: common sense.
This is not about whether or not it is religiously fitting or seemly from a family perspective for Jews to leave their homes and homeland on the Jewish new year and travel to Rabbi Nachman’s grave in Ukraine.  It is also not about what types of people go, or what types of activities take place there.
Those are value judgments, and everyone makes those determinations for themselves.
This is about only one question: is it smart in the time of a pandemic for tens of thousands of Israelis to travel to a country which itself is a corona red zone, having almost as much trouble as Israel dealing with the pandemic? Is it smart for those pilgrims to live, pray and eat in very close quarters, and then come back to Israel where they may infect others?
That’s the only issue, and the one both the policy makers and the politicians should be dealing with.
Whether one believes a trip to Uman on Rosh Hashanah fills or defiles one’s soul is irrelevant and inconsequential to this debate. This is not about the merits of going to Uman. This is not a religious, sociological or anthropological question. It’s a public health question.
Is it smart? Is it wise? Is it safe?
And the man the government, after much delay, chose to make these determinations – Israel coronavirus czar Ronni Gamzu – has determined quite unequivocally that it is not.
“There should be no flights to Uman – period,” Gamzu said in an N12 interview on Sunday, adding that “Uman will bring us to lockdown.”
He went even further, writing a letter to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky urging him to enforce a ban on these celebrations this year.
“A gathering of this sort, at such troubled times, is expected to generate mass events of infection of tourists and local Ukrainian residents, turning into a heavy burden on local medical systems, while thousands more are expected to come back to Israel and further spread the virus,” Gamzu said in the letter. “I urge you to enforce a ban on these celebrations this year, as part of the entire global community’s effort to stop this horrific pandemic.”
Gamzu’s voice should be listened to, his advice heeded. That is why he was placed in that job: precisely to make those types of decisions.
So what was United Torah Judaism’s Construction and Housing Minister Ya’acov Litzman’s reported response? Get rid of him. Litzman, and some other ultra-Orthodox (haredi) politicians, quickly turned this from a public health issue, into a haredi one.
If most of those making the pilgrimage are haredim, and the government official in charge of these issues is saying they should not go, then this must be an anti-haredi decree, this reasoning goes.
“This is a slap in the face to tens of thousands of Breslov followers,” Litzman said.
But that it is by no means the intention, and it is a disservice to portray it as such.
Often, when deciding questions of Jewish law, a rabbi – dealing with a halachic question that involves a health issue – will direct the questioner to the experts. For example, if a pregnant woman not feeling well goes to a rabbi and asks whether she should fast on Yom Kippur, the rabbi – in most cases – would advise consulting a doctor. He’s the expert.
The same is the case here. Gamzu has been crowned the country’s corona expert. So let him decide.
GAMZU HIMSELF made a misstep in his interview when instead of just sticking to the health issues, he added that the pilgrimages to Uman are “not something holy.”
That comment was superfluous and beyond his purview. His purview is the virus, and how to defeat it, not determining what is and what is not sacred.
Nevertheless, if Gamzu is not allowed to decide on this issue, if his decision is bypassed and his authority undercut, it will have a corrosive trickle down effect in the government’s ability to get a hold of the crisis. It will again rattle the public’s trust that decisions are being made on their merits, and not because of pressure from one group or another.
It took months for this government to finally appoint Gamzu to his job in late July. Another candidate, Gabriel Barabash, turned it down, because he feared he would not have the authority to do his job properly. If Gamzu is overridden in this case, it will prove Barabash correct, and the country will be the loser.
Israel has to decide whether it is serious about trying to defeat the virus. There are two key ingredients in doing so: coherent governmental policy, and a disciplined public that understands the magnitude of the situation and acts in a responsible manner.
Taiwan is an example of a country that has both and is doing astonishingly well in fighting the pandemic. A neighbor of coronavirus epicenter China, Taiwan – with a population of nearly 24 million – has only seven corona-related deaths to date. Israel has a population of just over nine million and nearly 850 corona fatalities.
Taiwan has a government that has acted in a transparent, consistent and effective manner from the first day – they also have been preparing for a pandemic since the SARS scare in 2003 – and a community-minded public willing to sacrifice some momentary freedoms for the greater communal good.
Both ingredients are currently needed in greater measure in Israel.
Enabling tens of thousands of people to go to Uman would reveal all that is wrong about how the Israeli government and society are dealing with the virus.
Such a move would be incoherent, in that it makes no sense to take such a risk at this time; inconsistent, in that Israel would essentially be allowing a gathering of tens of thousands in close quarters at a time when it doesn’t allow outside cultural gatherings in Israel of more than 500 people; and inconsiderate, for there is no other way to describe endangering public health for a moment of spiritual or physical pleasure.


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