Da’as Torah and Anti-Vaxxers
In a recent article in the Forward,
Rabbi Avi Shafran, the spokesman for Agudath Israel of America, the
umbrella organization of American Charedi Jews, complained that the
media was singling out the ultra-Orthodox as the prime culprits
responsible for the measles outbreak in the United States. He implied
that what underlay these media reports was not only anti-Charedi
sentiment but actually unvarnished anti-Semitism. He pointed out that on
the one hand there are many “anti-vaxxers” who are not Jewish, much
less Charedim. On the other hand, what he called the “vast majority” of
Orthodox Jews do have their children vaccinated.
On its face, Shafran is not incorrect. The problem is that
he simply is not telling the whole truth.
Indeed, it is the very
leaders of his own organization who are telling their followers not to
vaccinate their children if, for whatever reason, they don’t want to.
Even more troubling, these same leaders are forbidding schools under
their religious aegis to deny attendance to unvaccinated children.
Although ground zero for the outbreaks in America have
been the Chasidic strongholds of Brooklyn’s Williamsburg and Borough
Park neighborhoods, it is the non-Chasidic leaders of Agudath Israel who
not only have justified opposition to vaccinations, but explicitly
condemn schools that require vaccines as a prerequisite for attendance.
They draw upon on mostly discredited studies and argue that the risk of
complications from measles is minimal. They overlook the fact that the
saving of life (pikuach nefesh) applies even in cases where the
risk of death is minimal. Yet the risk is very real. I should know. Many
years ago, my younger brother nearly died from complications of
measles. It was only thanks to the proximity of a talented and energetic
doctor that he survived the trip to the hospital.
The risk is very real. I should know. Many years ago, my younger brother nearly died from complications of measles.
And yet these rabbis assert their opinion is nothing less than what has come to be called da’as Torah,
or Torah authority, elevating their erroneous and dangerous views to
the level of near prophesy. No wonder ordinary Charedim are loathe to
challenge the views of their respected leaders. To do so would be to
risk expulsion from their tightly-knit communities.
Who are the men issuing these
pronouncements? Two of them lead the Beis Medrash Govoha of Lakewood,
N.J.: Rabbi Malkiel Kotler, its chancellor or Rosh HaYeshiva, and Rabbi
Matisyahu Solomon, its moral tutor (to borrow a term employed at
Oxbridge colleges) or mashgiach. They lead a yeshiva that is the most
prestigious and the wealthiest school of its kind in the United Stares —
in effect, the Harvard of yeshivas. No wonder their word is taken as
law.
But these men are not alone among the rabbinical
anti-vaxxers. Rabbis Shmuel Kamenetsky and Aaron Schechter are, like
Rabbi Kotler, members of the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah — the Committee of
Torah Sages — that dictates Agudah’s religious and secular policies.
Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, a leading Israel-based decisor for thousands of
Charedim worldwide, has also, in the words of Rabbis Kotler, Solomon and
Kaminetsky, “explicitly ruled that schools cannot refuse such
[unvaccinated] children.” These rulings are not merely flouting science;
their da’as Torah is endangering hundreds, perhaps thousands of younger
children and older people who are especially vulnerable to
complications from measles.
In the previous century, Agudah’s rabbis invoked da’as
Torah to urge Europe’s Orthodox Jews not to emigrate to America or
Israel in order to escape the Nazi onslaught. Until May 1948, they
invoked the same principle to oppose the creation of the State of
Israel. In the 1970s and ’80s, they invoked da’as Torah again to counsel
against public demonstrations on behalf of Soviet Jewry. Now they
invoke it to oppose vaccinations. And once again, as before, they find
themselves on the wrong side of history.
Dov S. Zakheim was Under Secretary of Defense
in the George W. Bush administration and Deputy Under Secretary of
Defense in the second Ronald Reagan administration. He holds a doctorate
from Oxford.