Every posek in the world has clearly ruled during this crisis that preservation of life is paramount
I’ve written several times here about the importance of Torah Jews being circumspect about any particular political philosophy or party, no matter how much its policy agenda might in the moment seem to dovetail with ours. A too-tight embrace of either left or right will inevitably result in a false conflation of our unique Torah-based values with others that may bear some resemblance but are in fact far, far from ours.
The current crisis provides an example of this danger. We are comrades-in-arms with the pro-life movement, aren’t we? And, when years ago, Republicans railed against the so-called “death panels” that were purportedly a part of Obamacare’s vision for the American healthcare system, we Orthodox Jews felt they were kindred spirits, didn’t we?
But here we are, struggling amid a frightful pandemic, whose fury has been visited upon our own community with a terrifying intensity, and a national debate is underway about the necessity and duration of lockdowns and other mitigation measures. It’s a necessary debate, and given the steep societal costs whatever path is chosen, it’s also a complex one, not given to simple answers.
Yet, it has been so very unsettling to now see longtime ostensible proponents of the pro-life position suddenly begin to speak a different language, to find people who’ve advocated cherishing life at both its beginning and end suddenly downplaying preservation of life as a supreme value and attaching an economic price tag to the healthcare and longevity of people in their sixties and seventies.
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