"Hands Up! Don't Shoot! We Want Summer Camp!": Orthodox Jewry in the Age of COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter

In his classic formulation, Charles Liebman distinguished these camps by differentiating between Orthodoxy as a religion (or "church") and Orthodoxy as a sect 1 Recent scholarship by people like Samuel Heilman and especially Adam Ferziger has demonstrated how these divisions are collapsing, however, as Modern Orthodoxy "slides to the Right" (in Heilman's words) and ultra-Orthodoxy more confidently engages with broader society, focusing less on delegitimizing other Jewish denominations and more on policing its own borders-for example, denying the legitimacy of groups like the Open Orthodox (a ritually progressive Orthodox movement founded by Rabbi Avi Weiss) and fighting against the acceptance of gay partnerships or female clerical leaders 2 While Modern-Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox religious differences over ritual stringency and social integration are indeed collapsing as the movements increasingly pull towards each other, as Heilman and Ferziger describe, there is a broader yet less often discussed factor uniting the two groups as well: a new shared value that transcends their remaining religious differences Over the past few decades, Orthodox Jews have increasingly coalesced around an ethno-nationalist identity that embraces the political Right and its ultra-nationalist worldview-both in America and in Israel-as a religious foundation united against the threat of the cultural Left 3 This constitutes a break with the historical position of American Orthodox organizations since the 1950s and 60s, which were by-andlarge Democratic or, in other cases, expressly apolitical, especially on a national level [ ]the Modern wing of Orthodoxy-for whom respect for science and civic duty represent important values-quickly accepted the growing scientific consensus and government directives that synagogue services, celebrations, funerals, and other mass gatherings must immediately stop [ ]the Black Lives Matter protests exposed continued differences between the Modern Orthodox and Haredi communities