We Israelis have endured many unbearable tragedies.
October 7th permanently scarred an entire nation. We lived through horrors no one ever thought they'd see in the modern world. Even before that fateful day, we had a steady stream of horror. My children grew up watching footage of their school principal being gunned down in the street by terrorists. Teens were kidnapped and killed while hitchhiking. A bride-to-be was murdered the day before her wedding. And much more. At this point, we should be immune to anything that comes our way.
But some horrors are so unique that they still manage to cut even the most hardened shells. Recent events have proved to be such a case. This week in Jerusalem, six-month-old Aaron “Ari" Katz and 3-month-old Leah Golubenchik died after an unlicensed haredi daycare facility was evacuated. The reports say the two babies, aged four months, were taken to the hospital, where medics declared their deaths. All 53 babies and toddlers (the number includes children who live in the building where the nursery is located, ed.) were hospitalized, according to Magen David Adom emergency services.
Rumors say the tragedy occurred at a daycare facility in a number of adjacent apartments on Ha’Mem Gimel Street in the haredi-majority Romema neighborhood. At this stage of the investigation, details remain unclear. Authorities are investigating possible gas exposure from a heating device.
But what made this more than simply a horrible accident were the details that emerged about the daycare itself. As responders rushed in, they found children being kept in inhumane conditions. Infants were crowded into small spaces. Babies were found sleeping next to a toilet. Two caregivers from the unlicensed Jerusalem daycare are being held in custody on charges of reckless manslaughter. A police representative reported that he was shocked by what he saw and that the premises suffered from “clear neglect."
The incident brought to light a much larger issue in Israeli society. Much of Israel's childcare sector is sent to unmonitored and unregulated facilities instead of licensed ones, and over 100,000 infants are currently being cared for in facilities that operate outside of governmental oversight. The numbers are staggering. Approximately 35% of toddlers in Israel are in private daycare without proper supervision. Another 38% are in home daycare that is almost never supervised, although there are superintendents for regulated ones too. The government doesn't even know the exact number of children in daycare centers due to the wildcat facilities.
It was different than the normal tragedies that periodically rock the country. This wasn't terrorists. This wasn't an external enemy. This time, the threat came from our own community. The danger came from within. It was a new sort of crisis and one that sent the country reeling.
This was a failure on many levels. We in the haredi community have allowed a childcare system to cultivate that puts out children in direct harm. By ignoring safety regulations and industry standards, by thinking that the rules don't apply to us, we have allowed unscrupulous practices to flourish. This has been going for years and is widespread and systemic. Concerns and legitimate criticisms were covered up or handwaved away. We hid our heads in the sand thinking that we knew better and now we are paying a tragic but all too predictable price for our hubris.
It's easy to turn this into an attack on the haredi community. But these unlicensed daycares don't cater just to the haredi public. Plenty of secular parents put their children in shady programs, run by secular individuals. This neglect occurs in every sector of Israeli society. The tragedy occurred in a haredi neighborhood, but it could just as easily have taken place in the most hedonistic parts of Tel Aviv. It highlights a failure on our society at large, not in any one group. The fact that it happened to a involve haredi Jews this time shouldn't take away from the fact that this is a problem that concerns us all.
In fact, fixation on haredi Jews is also what allowed the situation to reach the level it did. The situation was allowed to get this bad because of Israeli society's longstanding vendetta against the haredi sector. The most recent case is just the latest example. When the Israeli Supreme Court blocked the rights of religious Jews to claim an exemption from the army due to yeshiva studies, the Attorney General’s Office instructed the Labor Ministry to cut daycare subsidies for the children of these fathers.
The completely predicable result of such a move is that thousands of families found themselves suddenly without adequate childcare. Consequently, they were forced to place their children in less the ideal centers, such as the one under scrutiny. Without the assistance to care for their children, families were left adrift to fend for themselves, and had to take whatever options were available to them, no matter how poor.
The unpleasant reality is that, although many families use unlicensed daycare to being with, the government's actions gave many additional families no other choice but to place their children in unsafe conditions, and as such the movement bares it's share of the blame. It was the government that created the conditions forcingl so many families into the situation they found themselves in.
Clearly, there is plenty of national introspection needed.
That there was countrywide outrage wasn't surprising. The shock was where some of the outrage was directed. Tens of thousands of religious Jews took to the streets in mass protests, but not against the circumstances that allowed such a terrible crime to occur. Instead, they focused their rage against the Israeli courts, which were allowing an autopsy of one of the infants to determine the cause of death.
Let me emphasize, many haredi protestors were rightfully outraged against the government actions that allowed this situation to develop. Many took to the streets to protest their lost rights and to advocate for their communities. Such protests are perfectly legitimate and what's more, a necessary avenue for social change. Advocating for one's right is the hallmark of democracy. And the grievances were valid and deserve a fair hearing.
These are not the protests I am speaking of. My ire is directly solely at the other protests, of which there were sadly too many. It's these protests that made most of the news, and it's these protests that secular Israelis, and much the of the rest of the world saw. If nothing else, it's what I experienced over the past few days.
Here in Beit Shemesh, we were in the thick of it. Riots shut down whole sections of the city. Large fires were set and damage was done to public property. Children ran wild and unsupervised in the street, any number of accidents waiting to happen. Buses were blocked from their routes, leaving many people stranded. It was not so much a peaceful protest as it was a riot.
And for what? The protests were not against cuts to daycare subsidies. The signs promoting the protest as well as the chants in the protests themselves were all fixated with the scheduled autopsy. As soon as the autopsy was canceled, the rallies immediately ended, making it clear that these ones were never about the funding issues, which are still ongoing.
Instead, all this chaos and rage not because two beautiful Jewish souls were needlessly allowed to die, but against those who wanted to gather enough information to make sure that it would never happen again.
I fear that many of us in the religious world have lost the plot.
Where was the righteous indignation over the death of two children and the danger caused to dozens more? Where was the anger, the fury against those who harmed, albeit without intent, our most vulnerable people? Why didn't they take to the streets to loudly and unequivocally condemn what was allowed to happen under our very noses? (The mother of one of the infants left her shiva house to defend the head of the center in court - but no one imagines this happened on purpose, it is the knowing flouting of laws that is the problem, no matter how loving the staff there is.)
Instead, there was fixation on a halakhic fine point. It's like a house burning down while the owners scream at the firefighters for dragging mud on their clean carpet. Too many of us in the haredi world are so fixated on a small action that we completely ignored the larger actions that led up to the issue in the first place. If such heartbreak can be prevented from ever occurring again, there will by default be no more autopsies.
To understand the motivations of these protestors, one must first understand the issue from a Torah perspective. In general, it's forbidden to desecrate the body of the dead in any fashion (such as cutting it open and removing the organs). This is known as the prohibition of nivel ha'met (desecration of the dead). There is also a prohibition against delaying a burial. It's against this that the protestors brought city life to a grinding halt.
Halakha does indeed obligate the strict preservation of the dignity of the dead and their path to burial. However, the ban on autopsies is not universal. Halakha holds that autopsies may still be permitted in a number of circumstances when there is a vital necessity for one. Most halakhic authorities hold that helping a police investigation when there is the possibility that a severe crime has been committed is considered vital.
But as always with Jews, there are multiple opinions, including those apparently held by the protestors that either an autopsy is never allowed or that the current situation does not warrant one. I doubt either side will ever be convinced. Rather than get into an endless and unresolvable halakhic debate, I'd like to make the following point.
Let us assume that an autopsy is completely unwarranted and totally forbidden in this case. Let us say that allowing it would be a crime. Even then, two children dying and many more hospitalized is objectively a far worse crime. You don’t have to be a rabbi to know that allowing innocent children to die is the greater sin.
This is where the outrage should be directed, once the cause is known. Rioting against an autopsy while allowing the situation that made it necessary will lead to more deaths down the road. And worse still, it shames us all as a community that not only are many of us not fighting for the welfare of our children, but are ignoring or opposing, at times violently, the very measures that would lead to change. And so the tragedy of the death of children is compounded by the tragedy of how people reacted to it.
What occurred was a calamity. The actions that follow must not add to the misfortune that's already occurred. We cannot add to the pain of those deaths by acting in a way that profanes the loss. Rioting and starting fires do nothing. Yes, the courts did agree to halt the autopsies, so perhaps rioters feel that they’ve won.
But at what cost? The entire Torah World now faces the rightful scorn of the secure public, who see us as more concerned about pedantic legal issues than saving human life. And by ignoring the larger issues, we allowing allowing the circumstances to fester until another such catastrophe becomes inevitable. Protestors might have won, but the casualties will be our own children.
In the long term, nothing good came from these riots. Violence and destruction do nothing for the neshamas of these dear children. If we want to honor their memory and make their deaths mean something, there are better ways.
The Talmud in Sotah 21b and Bava Kama 93a discusses an interesting case. A man sees a woman drowning in a river but refuses to save her because it would be immodest to touch her. Such a person is referred to in the Talmud as a Chasid Shoteh, a pious idiot. Such a man, says the Talmud, is someone who is religious but lacks common sense or proper judgment in applying that piety, resulting in foolish or even harmful actions.
This is what I have been witnessing over the past few days. Sincere reflection will show that we've caused a double tragedy. There was the initial tragedy of what circumstance or negligence allowed to happen. And add to that is the self-made tragedy of the shameful response so many had to it. We might be a nation that's used to tragedies, but we have enough of them without creating our own.
Ilan Goodman is a museum collections professional and exhibition curator. He also serves as a rabbi and educator. He made Aliyah to Israel in 2011 and lives with his wife and children in Beit Shemesh.