Politicians Shutter Churches and Synagogues, Then Tolerate Riots Congregating in public is now a privilege extended to political activists but denied to the devout. By Abigail Shrier
https://www.wsj.com/articles/politicians-shutter-churches-and-synagogues-then-tolerate-riots-11591376851?mod=opinion_lead_pos6
Ms. Shrier is author of “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters,” out June 30.
‘Are we in a pandemic or not?” a reporter from the Orthodox Jewish newspaper Hamodia asked New York Mayor Bill de Blasio Tuesday. “And do we have one set of rules for protesters and another for everyone else?”
Good questions. For nearly three months, the country founded to guarantee religious freedom has seen its houses of worship shut down. Following local and state executive orders, Catholic churches held no Mass. Communion wasn’t taken, confessions weren’t heard, and Catholics went to their final rest without the comfort of the sacraments. Jewish prayer services, which require a quorum, were broken up by city governments or banned by state executive orders. New York City police were dispatched to break up a Jewish funeral and close down a yeshiva where Jews teach their children Torah.
“My message to the Jewish community, and all communities, is this simple,” Mr. de Blasio thundered in an infamous tweet, after having dispatched police to break up a funeral: “The time for warnings has passed. I have instructed the NYPD to proceed immediately to summons or even arrest those who gather in large groups. This is about stopping this disease and saving lives. Period.”
All this seems a little odd now. Protesters in New York and across the U.S. have gone unmolested while gathering in “large groups,” even as rioters smashed and looted and set fire to public and private property. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, who not long ago said keeping houses of worship shut was essential to save lives, marched on Tuesday with protesters, his mask and his lockdown suddenly forgotten.
“When you see a nation, an entire nation, simultaneously grappling with an extraordinary crisis seeded in 400 years of American racism,” Mr. de Blasio said, explaining the double standard, “I’m sorry, that is not the same question as the understandably aggrieved store owner or devout religious person who wants to go back to services.” Perhaps that “devout religious person” ought to choose a better hobby, one more meaningful to Mr. de Blasio.
Over the past few months, religion seems to have suffered a demotion. California recently issued an order to ease restrictions, setting a 25% occupancy cap on houses of worship but not on retail stores or other businesses—one set of rules for worshipers, another for everyone else.
Perhaps most devastating, when petitioners challenged the order at the Supreme Court, the majority shrugged. “Similar or more severe restrictions apply to comparable secular gatherings, including lectures, concerts, movie showings, spectator sports and theatrical performances,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote. It seems the right to worship is no more worthy of preservation than the ninth installment of “Fast & Furious.”
Those of us who raised objections to the restrictions were derided for failing to care about human life and told to “use Zoom.” Did anyone have the temerity to suggest that the protesters who claimed the streets without restriction might likewise have availed themselves of Zoom?
Part of the blame lies with religious leaders, many of whom accepted the rules of quarantine for months on end and offered no protest—as if nothing very important were on the line. Bishops might have said that going to Mass “is the most important thing you could be doing with your life, and they’re not saying that, which is a little disconcerting in some ways,” Connie Van Gilder, a Catholic in Milwaukee, told me. “Because it really should be the leadership that says, ‘Wait a minute—we don’t give it up that easily.’ ”
I had the same reaction when my Modern Orthodox synagogue in Los Angeles closed. I didn’t think my synagogue should defy the orders. But as “15 days to flatten the curve” stretched into months, and more information about the virus became available, I wondered why religious leaders were afforded less trust with social distancing than the managers at Trader Joe’s.
Jewish martyrs of every age, from first-century Israel to czarist and Communist Russia, have defied government authority to pray, teach Torah and bury their dead. Rabbis of the Talmud like Akiva ben Yosef, for whom my son is named, met their death at the hands of Hadrian’s Romans for their refusal to stop reading Torah. My synagogue hasn’t read the Torah for months.
If churches and synagogues had fought to reopen sooner, maybe the riots would not have happened. Pastors might have channeled the fury of their congregants toward higher purpose, as the Rev. Cecil Murray famously did during the Los Angeles riots of 1992, when he preached: “The truth of the matter, we have no excuse for going around setting fires, for now we have no place where mothers can buy milk for their children.”
Had priests offered sacraments and penitents received them, Minneapolis police officers might have found it harder to stand by while they watched a man murdered—knowing he bore the image of God. If Americans sat in pews on Sundays, some of the looters might have been convinced to return what they had stolen. And an America riven by politics might surrender some of its tribal hate and recover its bonds of affection.
Ms. Shrier is author of “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters,” out June 30.
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