Don’t Vilify Orthodox Jews Because of the Measles Outbreak

A recent New York Times article on the measles outbreaks that have occurred in scattered parts of the United States was illustrated with a picture of a ḥasidic Jew walking down a street. But while popular perception has given the impression that, at least in the New York metropolitan area, ultra-Orthodox Jews who refuse to vaccinate their children are the cause of the epidemic, the truth is somewhat different, as Daniel Berman and Awi Federgruen write:

In this year’s U.S. measles outbreak, parts of Brooklyn and Rockland County have experienced two-thirds of the reported 704 infections. The media generally blame an alleged low vaccination rate in these areas, each with a large percentage of ultra-Orthodox Jews. . . . However, the New York State Health Department reports the average vaccination rate for measles among the nearly 200 Jewish K-12 schools in Brooklyn—mainly in [in the ḥasidic enclaves of] Borough Park and Williamsburg—is 96 percent, six percentage points higher than the statewide average among private schools. In contrast, six other New York counties have a vaccination rate below 50 percent.

Moreover, the measles vaccination rate among Jewish school-age children is above the assumed 95-percent threshold required for “herd immunity,” i.e., protection of the community from sustained outbreaks.

What, then, explains the outbreak? Regardless of the vaccination rate, some communities have characteristics that enhance and sustain epidemics. Population density and a community’s social-mixing patterns are two critical determinants of whether an outbreak dies out or remains sustained. Orthodox Jewish communities are densely populated. Families have many children and interact frequently. . . . [I]n a densely populated and highly interactive community, the average infected individual transmits measles to 24 others, and then 99 percent of the community must be vaccinated in order to ensure herd immunity. . . .

It is time to stop vilifying the Orthodox Jewish community when the data show their vaccination rates are as high as any. Continuing to blame this segment of the Jewish community—especially in the news media—is not only wrong. It actually jeopardizes the cooperation that is necessary to stem the outbreak. . . .

Read more at New York Daily News

More about: Brooklyn, Medicine, New York Times, Ultra-Orthodox

 

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society