“When the pandemic began, our educational institutions closed, and we immediately shifted to distance learning. There are a few things that are different about distance learning in the ultra-Orthodox society, mainly that everything works through the telephone. This led us to immediately establish telephone lines organized according to classes, with a system that helps explain to teachers how to record lessons, how to be in touch with students, and how to effectively teach from a distance. We printed workbooks and worksheets for students of all ages and we distributed them in different points throughout the city.
I regret that I haven’t kept a diary these past two months. I had a fire burning in my soul the entire time – how can I take care of my community my public? How can I have an impact and help them?
A friend came to me and said, ‘Listen. There’s no place to get married, my daughter needs to get married and there isn’t anywhere – the halls can’t host events.’ So we took the school yard, we worked the whole night setting up lighting, organizing, cleaning up and bringing a table. We counted chairs and marked off distances. And believe it or not, you can get married in a school yard.
The true is that I see an opportunity for change here that’ll be bigger than the pandemic. We’re talking about social change. The amount of money people waste on one-night events disturbs me, so maybe we can succeed in making a habit of celebrations in the school yard.
I found myself very much occupied with the topic of public health in the ultra-Orthodox community. For example, the rabbis of the city gathered with ultra-Orthodox doctors, who explained what the story is and what’s happening to them. Based on this, they made legal rulings about how people ought to behave and proceed.
I know for certain that the ultra-Orthodox society’s delay in adhering to the coronavirus guidelines came from a lack of communication with the public. The Israeli public understood how to protect themselves, they listened to the news broadcasts and read the newspapers – the ultra-Orthodox society didn’t see and didn’t hear. The decision-makers didn’t realize that the decisions needed to be made differently; that they needed to be mediated differently.
It took the ultra-Orthodox public time to fully grasp the size of this immense event, but when it finally did, that was it. Look out at the street – there isn’t one person without a mask. The ultra-Orthodox society is operating safely.
One cannot make decisions about people when one is not from among them. Decision-making needs to be a shared process; one needs to be willing to listen and get to know others, to adapt. This has caused me to tell my story more. During this entire pandemic period, it was important to me to make connections with doctors and rabbis. To understand the difficulty, to understand what everyone was talking about. What’s the difficulty for the rabbis? It’s about mikvahs and synagogues; it’s the need to stay open and make prayer possible. We have to understand that there are communities for which prayer in a minyan is not like closing a coffee shop. It simply isn’t the same thing.
We prepared the school yards of our educational institutions. In the open-air schoolyards, students could come and study. Yesterday, the director of a yeshiva called me from Bnei Brak. He told me that there are hundreds of young yeshiva students who live in Modi’in Illit, but that when the institutions are closed, they have nowhere to study. So the school yards are now their alternative option. Everything they need is there so that they can study Torah. This is what the great rabbis want, and this is what we care about.
The pandemic period is full of opportunities to help the public, to engage partners for all sorts of initiatives. These are partners in the MAOZ Network – from the Ministry of Education to the Ministry of Finance. What is special about these people is that as members of the Network, they speak the same language. We share a high level of trust with each other based on the fact that they know my story and I know theirs. And most of all, we all share a true desire to help one another.
Every one of us lives in our own environment. I believe that this is our role – to look not at ourselves, but outside ourselves. To try to do good. To make the effort.”