Community Post-traumatic Growth: Israeli Ultra-Orthodox Coping with Coronavirus

Abstract

The present study sheds light on the phenomenon whereby groups experience adversity, following which they show signs of growth. We propose the conceptualization of post-traumatic growth as a phenomenon that also exists at the group level, “community post-traumatic growth” (CPTG). The concept of CPTG is explained using a case study on the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in Israel following the first wave of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. The study describes shared characteristics of Israeli ultra-Orthodox society and the crisis it experienced during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, both in terms of physiological features such as the relatively high proportion of affected people and in terms of psychological characteristics such as the shut-down of synagogues and yeshivas, and the perceived discrimination they experienced from the general population in Israel. The present study views the sense of discrimination as a traumatic factor at the group level. In total, 256 participants completed online questionnaires examining three hypotheses: (1) sense of discrimination (trauma) will be correlated with level of CPTG; (2) the level of identification with the ultra-Orthodox culture will be positively related to CPTG, while the level of identification with Israeli culture will be negatively correlated with CPTG; (3) the level of life satisfaction of the individual will be predicted by CPTG. The results supported the hypotheses and are discussed at length in the discussion section.