War Breaks Out in New York’s ultra-Orthodox Community Over Measles Outbreak
Unique aspects of Haredi culture have led to an anti-vaxxer
movement developing in the community. As senior rabbis issue
contradictory rulings, medical experts are using informal gatherings to
try to spread the word about the importance of vaccinations
NEW YORK – The current measles outbreak in ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods in the New York area
is leading to threats, recriminations and lawsuits, and is also
highlighting the lack of consensus among senior rabbis on the
vaccination issue.
However, it is also
leading to new approaches from medical experts trying to reach those
who, in the face of nearly 130 suspected cases of the highly contagious
disease, remain determined not to vaccinate their children.
There are now 113 confirmed cases of measles in ultra-Orthodox
(or Haredi) communities around New York City and Lakewood, New Jersey,
with another 16 suspected and under investigation by public health
authorities. Two measles-infected babies have been hospitalized in
intensive care units. And while it is mostly infants who have been
infected, some teenagers and a handful of adults have also fallen ill.
Why has the
anti-vaxxer perspective taken hold in pockets of the Haredi community?
The answer, say longtime observers, has to do with long-held suspicions
of government agencies, including health departments, prizing cultural
isolation, reliance on their own communities for things like emergency
services, and placing their trust in God to protect them.
U.S. public health authorities say the current outbreak started when Haredi families visited Israel last Sukkot
and brought the illness back to their communities. An 18-month-old
infant in Jerusalem’s Haredi Mea She’arim neighborhood has died and
nearly 1,500 potential cases have been reported.
Non-vaccination rates are high in Israeli areas with large Hasidic
populations, including the city of Safed and the town of Kfar Chabad.
Haredi
immunization rates have dipped in recent years as a result of
anti-immunization views taking root in the community. Now, as the number
of infected Haredim grows, some within the religious Jewish community
are initiating new efforts to reach Haredi anti-vaxxers.
Growing backlash
Tensions within the community are running high.
A Crown Heights couple, Sholom and Esther Laine, is suing Yeshiva Oholei Torah
– a Lubavitch boys’ school – for not allowing their unvaccinated son to
start kindergarten. In the suit, Esther Laine says the school is
infringing on her constitutionally protected religious right to claim
exemption from the requirement of most schools, including Oholei Torah,
that all students be immunized. Several attempts to contact the Laines
were unsuccessful.
“The
battle is getting very fierce,” says a Haredi mother, speaking to
Haaretz from her home in Lakewood. “People are getting threats if they
question vaccinations,” says the mother of three, who asked that her
name not be published for fear of being pressured or intimidated by
neighbors.
The ultra-Orthodox
towns Monsey and New Square are part of Rockland County, about an hour
north of New York City. There are currently 75 confirmed cases of
measles and six more suspected.
In New York City,
there are now 24 confirmed measles cases – all in the Hasidic Brooklyn
neighborhoods of Williamsburg and Borough Park – says Dr. Jane Zucker at
the Department of Health. “This outbreak would not have occurred had
the children been vaccinated,” she says.
Although
measles was officially declared eradicated in the United States in
2000, this is not the first outbreak of the disease in the
ultra-Orthodox community. In 2013, there was a significant uptick in
measles in Williamsburg and Borough Park, with 58 cases reported. There
was also another minor outbreak in New York City earlier this year,
which resulted in a miscarriage, pneumonia and hospitalizations, according to The New York Daily News.
Now there is a
growing backlash: Those known to be non-vaccinators are being ostracized
by fellow Haredim, say members of the community. “People frown upon
neighbors who aren’t vaccinating; there is animus toward them,” says
Alexander Rapaport, a Hasidic Jew who lives in Borough Park and is
founder and director of Masbia, a kosher soup kitchen and food pantry.
“You hear there’s someone in that building that doesn’t vaccinate, and
now the whole building is having tsuris with them,” he says, using the
Yiddish word for trouble.
Ultra-vaxxers and anti-vaxxers
Unvaccinated measles
carriers convey a significant risk to others who aren’t immunized –
either because they are too young or have compromised immune systems.
One person sick with measles can spread it to as many as 18 others,
public health authorities warn. Children typically get two doses of the
MMR vaccine: one between 12 and 15 months; and another between 4 and 6
years. A child who has gotten both shots is believed to be 97 percent
protected from the disease, say health experts. Now, health department
authorities are urging vaccinations for children as young as 6 months,
and to hasten the second dose so as many people as possible are fully
protected.
Rabbis beyond the New
York area are now taking steps to prevent the measles from reaching
their communities. Last week, the heads of the two main Orthodox
rabbinical courts in Chicago issued a letter stating that “nobody has a
right to endanger others by not vaccinating their children.” An
unvaccinated person exposing other people to measles during an outbreak
puts the non-immunized person in the category of someone who actively
poses a threat to life, they wrote, using the term rodef (lethal
pursuer) – which is a serious violation of Torah law.
The rabbis urged all
schools, playgroups and shuls to ban any unvaccinated child, writing,
“This is nothing less than a matter of pikuach nefesh,” referring to the
religious law in which preservation of human life overrides virtually
all other religious considerations.
Furthermore, prominent Israeli Haredi rabbis recently issued a strongly worded decree that those who refuse to vaccinate “are causing bloodshed,”
according to the ultra-Orthodox newspaper Kikar Hashabbat. Rabbi Moshe
Sternbuch, head of Jerusalem’s stringent Edah HaChareidis rabbinical
court, issued an order that every father “must ensure that his son and
daughter are immunized immediately.”
However, other influential Haredi rabbis view the issue differently.
Well-known Jewish
legal expert Rabbi Shmuel Kamenetsky and his wife, Temi, are often cited
for their anti-immunization stance, which was expressed in a 2014 Baltimore Jewish Times article: “Vaccines are a hoax. It is just big business,” Rabbi Kamenetsky was quoted as saying.
The rabbi’s status
means his views carry weight beyond his own immediate circle. He is also
a member of Agudath Israel of America’s Council of Torah Sages, which,
along with the Haredi advocacy organization in general, “will not be
taking a position on vaccinations or the measles outbreak,” says
spokeswoman Leah Zagelbaum.
Another member of the Council of Torah Sages, Lakewood’s Rabbi Malkiel Kotler, endorses the Lakewood Vaccine Coalition,
which was created last March with the aim of advocating on behalf of
those who do not want to immunize their children. The coalition’s
website, in the meantime, has disappeared and its phone number is out of
service. An email elicited no response.
An anonymous group called PEACH (Parents Teaching and Advocating for our Children’s Health) has circulated an anti-immunization booklet
throughout the religious community in the New York area and beyond. In
it, an anonymous author claims that “hundreds of thousands of children’s
lives have been ruined within hours of vaccines.” The idea that measles
is a serious illness is “a fabrication,” it adds.
There is no
identifying information about PEACH in the booklet and, with no online
presence or listed phone numbers, the group is untraceable.
Changing things from the bottom up
This anonymous
spreading of misinformation is frustrating to those who want to see
Haredi children fully protected from communicable diseases.
Blima Marcus is an
oncology nurse and president of the Orthodox Jewish Nurses Association.
The OJNA is now trying to reach out to religious parents in a personal,
informal way and has established an email address for those who want
information.
In just the first few
days, “we’ve been contacted by a few people seeking reassurance or
clarification on specific vaccines,” Marcus tells Haaretz. The OJNA is
planning to hold living-room gatherings soon. These will involve “no
physicians, no agendas, no judgment: just frum [religious] nurses coming
to listen, talk, answer questions and educate,” she says, adding, “We
have 30 nurses from around the states who already volunteered their time
to do this in their communities.”
Dr. Zackary Sholem
Berger, an associate professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins School of
Medicine, has written in Yiddish publications about medical issues in
the Orthodox community. He just held a session at a Borough Park health
clinic with the goal of hearing the concerns of Haredi doctors, nurses
and other medical professionals.
“To see any sector of
my community not vaccinate is horrifying,” says Berger. However, “If
you wag your finger at anti-vaccine people, it doesn’t work.” Persuading
them “has to come from the bottom up,” adds Berger, who has a doctorate
in epidemiology.
Anti-vaccine views
have seemingly become entrenched in some parts of Haredi communities
because of aspects of ultra-Orthodox culture.
There is a general
distrust of government authorities that is likely rooted in the Jewish
legal prohibition against one Jew turning another into the police, say
knowledgeable observers. Hasidic communities were established in Eastern
Europe at a time when government authorities themselves persecuted Jews
– or at the very least, turned a blind eye to those who did. Historical
memory in general is prized in Haredi communities and passed down from
one generation to the next, almost like cherished silver Shabbat
candlesticks.
Dangerous influence
There is also an
insularity in Haredi communities – particularly among women, who
frequently lack access to the internet – that is viewed as a negative
and dangerous influence. As a result, WhatsApp and similar phone-based
chat groups are popular among Haredi women, says the OJNA’s Marcus.
Participants in one
WhatsApp group Marcus belongs to said they don’t trust studies because
they are funded by pharmaceutical companies, she says. Furthermore, they
don’t trust the Food and Drug Administration, which must approve all
medications, because they believe “the FDA is in the pocket of
pharmaceutical companies,” Marcus adds.
Haredi communities
are also accustomed to relying on themselves rather than the outside
world for many things, notes Borough Park’s Rapaport. “They have an
off-the-grid mentality, so they don’t call 911” in case of emergency,
but call the Orthodox volunteer ambulance corps Hatzalah instead. And
instead of calling the police, they contact the volunteer patrol Shomrim
– which arrives faster anyway, he says. “It’s a mind-set which allows
something like anti-vaccination to spread,” says Rapaport.
What’s more, he adds,
there is a fondness for “old world wisdom” – like when people say: My
bubbie [grandmother] and aunt had measles, and they lived to be 90.
But Marcus cautions
that a lot of people talk about the past “as if it was a healthier or
safer time – but 100 years ago many people didn’t live past 8 years
old.” In the ultra-Orthodox world, “there’s a lot of misinformation as
to how things were different in the past,” she says.
Marcus also notes
that alternative medicine is popular among the Haredi community. “There
are large pockets of homeopathy followers in Hasidic Williamsburg, in
Monroe and in Lakewood,” she says.
One popular Borough
Park chiropractor is distributing pamphlets in his office about the
dangers of vaccines. People travel from upstate Rockland County to see
him, says Marcus. The chiropractor did not return several messages left
for him at his home and office, but the woman answering his office phone
acknowledged that they do distribute anti-immunization information.
Finally, for some
Haredi Jews, not immunizing their children is a reflection of their
ultimate trust in God. “If we believe we are protected by the One above,
we really have nothing to worry about,” the Lakewood mother tells
Haaretz. “We try to keep restrengthening our absolute belief that
nothing in the world can harm us unless it is the will of God.”