Ultra-Orthodox in Israel hit hard by coronavirus

Until the coronavirus hit, Shlomi Philip worked as a bartender at a popular Jerusalem night spot. With the bar shuttered, he now devotes his time to volunteering with Israel’s emergency medical teams testing for COVID-19.

Philip, the eldest of 15 children, is the only member of the family living outside the ultra-Orthodox Midi’in Ilit town. As such, he is the one who provides his parents and siblings with information about the coronavirus spread and the required precautions. Like many ultra-Orthodox families, Philip’s family does not have a television or internet and is completely cut off from the secular world. In recent days, cars fitted with loudspeakers have been making the rounds of ultra-Orthodox towns and neighborhoods, exhorting residents, in Yiddish and Hebrew, to stay home, and citing rabbis’ edicts that defying authorities’ orders to self-isolate and avoid congregation endangers others and is therefore a sin.

Israel’s ultra-Orthodox community of some 1.1 million, about 12% of the population, has been hardest hit by the epidemic. According to Health Ministry data, the rate of infection in ultra-Orthodox towns and neighborhoods doubles every three days, compared with a national average rate of every six days. The number of those diagnosed with COVID-19 in the suburban ultra-Orthodox Tel Aviv town of Bnei Brak was projected to be as high as 50%, said professor Joshua Shemer, chairman of the board of Assuta Medical Centers. “Bnei Brak is a disaster zone,” Shemer said on Channel 13 News, as a campaign was launched to remove all residents 80 and older from their homes to confinement centers.

This growing public health threat led to a virtual blockade of Bnei Brak in recent days, with police at roadblocks and on the streets trying to enforce quarantine orders. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced April 1 that access to and from the town would be restricted. There is almost a complete closure.