Last week, Israeli Ḥaredim rioted in response to efforts to enforce a coronavirus lockdown, throwing stones, blocking roads, and even burning an empty bus. Then on Sunday over 10,000 ḥaredi Jews flooded the streets in the funeral procession for the late sage Meshullam Dovid Soloveitchik; thousands more turned out for the funeral of Rabbi Yitzḥok Scheiner on the same day—despite the fact that Scheiner had condemned such events and urged his followers to adhere strictly to social-distancing regulations. On the floor of the Knesset, Moshe Gafni, the leader of a ḥaredi political party, insisted that his own community was not to blame: “You,” he said, addressing the secular political establishment, “who sent us to live in such crowded conditions, it’s your fault! And you even have the nerve to attack us, when none of this is even true!”

In Gafni’s response, Yehoshua Pfeffer—a ḥaredi rabbi, halakhic authority, and the editor of the journal Tzarich Iyun—sees precisely the attitude that created last week’s scenes. Behind this attitude, argues Pfeffer, lies an atrophied sense of civic virtue, the result of centuries of living in exile. The lack of appreciation for this virtue has harmed Israeli society as a whole, but ḥaredi society above all:

After an annus horribilis of COVID-19—of remarkably high rates of infection, tragic and ostensibly preventable deaths, deadly weddings and gatherings, deep animosity between Ḥaredim and non-Ḥaredim, and anti-establishment violence on our streets—it has become clear that something has to change. And whatever that something is, it has to come from within, in a way that does not threaten the integrity of ḥaredi society and the core values we hold dear.

Pfeffer goes on to argue that Ḥaredim must recover the Jewish ideal of derekh erets—literally, the “way of the earth”—a term variously meaning etiquette, productive work and professions, or secular education, but which he understands as encompassing civic virtue:

Derekh erets is not just a secular matter alone, an obligation to establish a well-structured society that will ensure efficient function for the benefit of all. It is also a matter of holiness. The famous adage that derekh erets precedes the Torah makes a basic normative claim: the Torah is the “second floor” of the great edifice that Judaism means to create, while the “first floor” is derekh erets. A holy society, a society of Godliness, cannot be founded in the air; [it must be] built on the foundations of derekh eretz.

[W]hile the moral price of bad citizenship might have always been obvious, COVID-19 clarified just how costly the lack of civic virtue can be, resulting in a tragic death toll, a hatred of Ḥaredim that has spilled over to hatred of religion, and inexcusable behavior toward civil authorities whose . . . cost is potentially immense. It is high time we started to cut our losses.

Early Friday morning, Israel attacked military installations near the Iranian cities of Isfahan and nearby Natanz, the latter being one of the hubs of the country’s nuclear program. Jerusalem is not taking credit for the attack, and none of the details are too certain, but it seems that the attack involved multiple drones, likely launched from within Iran, as well as one or more missiles fired from Syrian or Iraqi airspace. Strikes on Syrian radar systems shortly beforehand probably helped make the attack possible, and there were reportedly strikes on Iraq as well.

Iran itself is downplaying the attack, but the S-300 air-defense batteries in Isfahan appear to have been destroyed or damaged. This is a sophisticated Russian-made system positioned to protect the Natanz nuclear installation. In other words, Israel has demonstrated that Iran’s best technology can’t protect the country’s skies from the IDF. As Yossi Kuperwasser puts it, the attack, combined with the response to the assault on April 13,

clarified to the Iranians that whereas we [Israelis] are not as vulnerable as they thought, they are more vulnerable than they thought. They have difficulty hitting us, but we have no difficulty hitting them.

Nobody knows exactly how the operation was carried out. . . . It is good that a question mark hovers over . . . what exactly Israel did. Let’s keep them wondering. It is good for deniability and good for keeping the enemy uncertain.

The fact that we chose targets that were in the vicinity of a major nuclear facility but were linked to the Iranian missile and air forces was a good message. It communicated that we can reach other targets as well but, as we don’t want escalation, we chose targets nearby that were involved in the attack against Israel. I think it sends the message that if we want to, we can send a stronger message. Israel is not seeking escalation at the moment.