Published: 12 November 2020
Last updated: 4 March 2024
WE MELBURNIANS ARE NOW FREE from coronavirus lockdown - up to a point. At the time of writing, I am allowed to meet nine friends outdoors in a public place – unless I plan to daven. If it’s a religious service, permitted gatherings are now up to 20, plus a faith leader.
Clearly the coronavirus does not know whether we are a group of pious souls gathering to read Torah, a party of libertines with intentions to eat, drink and be merry – or perhaps a compromise with a bottle of kiddush wine and an eye to shidduch opportunities.
But the thoroughly secular Victorian Government has clearly accepted that a religious service warrants different treatment from a social or cultural gathering.
Premier Dan Andrews, Chief Health Officer Professor Brett Sutton and their teams who have done an extraordinary job in bringing down Melbourne’s Covid-19 rate of new cases from a day of 725 new cases and 15 deaths to several days of zero.
Inconsistencies are inevitable when implementing a gradual plan that can be easily communicated to and observed by an entire State. But what interests me about this particular inconsistency is that it rests on an attitude to religion that is at odds with how we, as Jews, understand the world.
But what interests me about this particular inconsistency is that it rests on an attitude to religion that is at odds with how we, as Jews, understand the world.
Is a Shabbat dinner a religious service? Does it matter if we make kiddush or include words of Torah? If it’s excluded because it’s a meal, then what about Havdalah?
Judaism is something we do far more than something we believe. As a Jew in a non-Jewish world I’ve often had to sound more pious than I feel in order to live a Jewish life.
When I took my first job as a journalist, I struggled with what to do about Friday nights. It had been impressed upon me that journalists had to be available whenever the job demanded. The New Zealand Herald didn’t publish a Sunday edition so Saturdays were usually free but Friday nights – like Sundays – were regular working hours.
I screwed my courage to the sticking place and approached the Chief of Staff, explaining that I was Jewish, that Friday night was a religious occasion for me, and that if I could possibly not be rostered, I’d be very willing to work extra Sundays in exchange.
He eyed me sceptically and said, “I don’t know about that. There are a lot of people round here who reckon Friday night is a bit of a religious occasion. They all want to go the pub.”
Though I was too junior to dare argue, I wanted to believe my “religious observance”- actually more about culture, family and tradition than belief – was a more compelling reason for special consideration than the Antipodean tradition of Friday night at the pub.
Apparently, some part of my Chief of Staff did too. Although he never said another word on the subject, in the two years I spent on that paper my name never appeared on the Friday night roster. I was not even rostered extra Sundays.
I was, and still am, grateful for this consideration but I’m less sure now of where it leaves us.
Making exceptions for religious observance is complicated and potentially dangerous. The disproportionately high rate of COVID-19 infections in Haredi communities in Israel and the United States – and the resulting risks for anyone in contact with them – can be traced at least in part to an attitude that privileges gathering in community for prayer over health risks and civil law – an attitude which, importantly, is not justified by Jewish law.
The disproportionately high rate of infections in Haredi communities can be traced at least in part to an attitude that privileges gathering in community for prayer over health risks and civil law – an attitude which is not justified by Jewish law.
As the recent Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse made clear, terrible things can happen when we don’t subject religious actors to the same scrutiny and standards imposed on other parts of society.
Yet, for all its secularism, Australia – and many other Western societies – continue to allow many exceptions for matters of religious belief. Laws preventing discrimination on the basis of gender or sexual orientation or marital status are suspended when it comes to religious institutions and schools. We provide tax exemptions to religious institutions. Some awards allow extra leave for religious holidays.
These exceptions derive from an admirable principle that people should not be compelled to act against their own consciences.
But from a Jewish point of view, the privileging of something done for religious reasons leads to some odd contradictions. Atheist Jews find themselves explaining they are taking Yom Kippur off “for religious reasons” because it is just too difficult or unacceptable to explain why they need the day off if they can’t play the religion card.
Jews for whom Jewishness is far more a cultural or ethnic identity name it as religion on the census or on a hospital registration form because that’s the only way a world to identify in a world delineated by Christian frameworks of faith.
We are a better society when we appreciate diversity and make it possible for people to do what works for them. Special considerations for personal circumstances – be they religious, cultural, family or personal reasons – should be accommodated whenever possible because they enable us to lead meaningful integrated lives.
But a worldview that elevates religion above other aspects of life should not, if you’ll excuse me, be taken as gospel.
Photo: interior of the East Melbourne Synagogue
