https://mishpacha.com/inscrutable-by-design/
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?
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.
As I noted above, the questions of when and how much and how quickly
to begin easing up on the lockdown are complex ones given the human toll
on both sides of the equation. If poskim were to be consulted by government in this decision-making process, I have no idea how they would rule on those questions.
But I do know this: Every posek in the world has clearly
ruled during this crisis that preservation of life is paramount. They
have instructed repeatedly that we must closely heed the directives of
the very “majority of scientists, especially health officials, doctors,
and epidemiologists” whom Prager sneeringly dismisses, and that not only
that Orthodox writer’s missed trips to museums and zoos must yield, but
when necessary, the kol Torah and tefillah of Klal Yisrael too.
