There are more than 150 confirmed cases of measles within New York’s Orthodox communities. It is believed that these outbreaks began with an unvaccinated child who traveled to Israel and caught the measles there. Most Jewish religious authorities have urged their followers to get vaccinations. The Orthodox Union (OU) and the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA) issued a statement urging “all parents to vaccinate their healthy children on the timetable recommended by their pediatrician.” The Chabad website states “Guarding your own health doesn’t only make sense, it’s actually a mitzvah.” Yet there are some ultra-Orthodox rabbis who disagree. Rabbi Shmuel Kamenetzky, dean of the Talmudical Yeshiva of Philadelphia, has stated, “I see vaccinations as the problem. It’s a hoax. Even the Salk [polio] vaccine is a hoax. It’s just big business.” He also made another argument against vaccinations. What else did he say?
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A. Rabbi Kamenetzky said that vaccines are not necessary because it is God who decides “who shall live and who shall die.”
B. “I am not against preventing diseases among our beloved children,” said Rabbi Kamenetzky. “But the vaccines were all created from gelatin which is derived from pigs. Pigs are treif, so the vaccines are treif. Even if the vaccines would work, it would be a chillul Hashem (a desecration of God’s name) to expose our children to this unkosher medicine.”
C. Rabbi Kamenetzky said that even if vaccinations can prevent measles, they are more likely to cause autism.
D. Said Rabbi Kamenetzky, “I am not saying that no one should get vaccinated. But I am saying that the government should not be telling us what we must do. The government is already telling us we cannot perform a bris by metzitzah b’peh (a practice where oral suction is part of the circumcision procedure). In some countries in Europe they are telling us we cannot wear a yarmulke, and that kosher shechita (ritual slaughtering) is forbidden. We cannot, and must not, allow the government to interfere with our religious beliefs and our Jewish lives.”
E. Rabbi Kamenetzky said that if the diseases that vaccines purport to prevent were really a problem, children would already be sick because of their exposure to school janitors, who “are mostly Mexican and are unvaccinated.”