As Measles Outbreak Worsens In California, A Look At Jewish Schools' Immunization Rates Reveals Many Flaws

At the Ramaz School, a modern Orthodox day school in Manhattan, principal Rabbi Haskel Lookstein issued a ruling that vaccinations are considered “p’kuach nefesh,” a Jewish legal standard under which religious requirements are suspended to protect human life. “It’s a condition of attending Ramaz,” Paul Shaviv, its head of school, said of vaccinations. “It’s absolutely required for the protection of the health of the students.” But haredi gadol Rabbi Shmuel Kamenetzky ruled that vaccines are a "hoax."

 

There's currently an outbreak of measles in California that started in Disneyland, likely by a visitor from a foreign country who had not been vaccinated and had been exposed to the disease. Measles is extremely contagious. It is transmitted in the air, so you don't need direct contact with the carriers to catch it. A person can even catch measles by being in a room a measles carrier was in an hour before.

Measles was essentially eradicated in the US a decade ago. But parents who refuse to have their kids vaccinated ruined that, and among those advocating against vaccinations are haredi gadol Rabbi Shmuel Kamenetzky and his wife. (Please see here and here.) And that has helped ensure that measles periodically pops up in haredi communities.

The problem is,  pretty soon we will all lose the benefit of herd immunity, and when that happenes, the nuttiness of the Kamenetzkys and the other anti-vaccine fanatics (most of whom, to be clear, are not Jewish), will truly endanger all of our families and neighbors.

So? How are Jewish schools handling this problem? The answer, the JTA reports, is varied:

…According to a compilation of state data by the San Francisco-based radio station KQED, 26 percent of kindergarten students last year at the Chabad Academy of San Diego and Beth Hillel Day School in Los Angeles opted out of vaccines last year. In 2012, 14 percent of kindergarten students at the Seattle Hebrew Academy in Washington state opted out, according to the radio station KUOW in Seattle.

The statistics are not a perfect guide to immunizations rates. For example, Beth Hillel principal Seth Pozzi explained to JTA that the seemingly high rate of non-vaccination was due to several of the children in transitional kindergarten being too young to complete their vaccines. Pozzi said all have since been vaccinated.

The Chabad Academy of San Diego and Seattle Hebrew Academy did not return multiple calls requesting comment.…

To be effective, vaccines rely upon what is called herd immunity. In the case of the most contagious diseases, like measles and whooping cough, roughly 95 percent of the population must be immunized to ensure that if an infected person should appear, the disease does not spread. This is particularly important to protect the less than 1 percent of the population with an adverse physical reaction to vaccines, such as anaphylaxis, and thus cannot be vaccinated.

“We eliminated measles transmission in the U.S. in 2000,” said Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and a strong advocate for universal vaccination. But, he added, “When you have an erosion of herd immunity, the most contagious diseases come back first.”

In New York, private schools have much greater freedom to decide whether to accept parental objections to vaccinations on religious grounds. At the Ramaz School, a modern Orthodox day school in Manhattan, principal Rabbi Haskel Lookstein issued a ruling that vaccinations are considered “p’kuach nefesh,” a Jewish legal standard under which religious requirements are suspended to protect human life.

“It’s a condition of attending Ramaz,” Paul Shaviv, its head of school, said of vaccinations. “It’s absolutely required for the protection of the health of the students.”

In 2005, the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards of the Conservative movement ruled likewise, unanimously, that vaccination was required under Jewish law, save for medical exceptions. But elsewhere in the country, the rules are not so strict or the community is not so supportive of immunization.

Last August, Rabbi Shmuel Kamenetzky, an influential haredi Orthodox rabbi in Philadelphia, told the Baltimore Jewish Times, “I see vaccinations as the problem. It’s a hoax. Even the Salk vaccine [against polio] is a hoax. It is just big business.”…

Read it all here.

Related Posts:

All Measles Posts.

Comments

[sam green]

Rabbi kamenetzkys father also said thyll never land on the moon

[Yochanan Lavie]

Modern Ortho is now fundamentalism lite.

[Rocky]

As the measles outbreak worsens, Congress continues to spend its time trying to chip away at Roe v. Wade. House Republicans are more concerned sbout saving the unborn than worrying about the children in the here and now.

[Garnel Ironheart]

Simple solution:
Any private school that has refusers should charge triple tuition. It's justified because these children are a health risk.
Any private school that accomodates refusers should receive ZERO donations from the outside.

[Elliot]

"It's a hoax...it is just big business."

Sounds like a whole bunch of religious institutions out there!

[Jeff]

"Modern Ortho is now fundamentalism lite."

Yep.

[S M L]

All any individual can do is to make sure that he/she and those under his or her care are immunized. You'll be doing your part for your own good and for the common good. However the unimmunized put each other at risk as well as putting those who are immunocompromised at risk, something which is inexcusable.

[Sarek]

>>“I see vaccinations as the problem. It’s a hoax. Even the Salk vaccine [against polio] is a hoax. It is just big business.”

And the earth is flat, the sun revolves around the earth, the earth is 6000 years old, dinosaurs lived until recently, etc. etc.

Is he ignorant? Stupid? Or just a willful liar? Nobody with half a brain would listen to this clown.

Not sure, but this alleged rabbi is a danger to society, not just Jews. Where are the clowns who scream "excommunication" when you need them?

[anchell]

Simple solution:
Any private school that has refusers should charge triple tuition. It's justified because these children are a health risk.
Any private school that accomodates refusers should receive ZERO donations from the outside.

Posted by: Garnel Ironheart | January 23, 2015 at 07:51 AM

. . .Quite the draconian and fascistic response to what is most likely an informed and educated decision. There are too many subtleties to go too deeply into the vaccination programs.

But do note that our stomachs is estimated to be responsible for in excess of eighty percent of our immune system. While the western diet reliance on highly processed inorganic foods do not promote a stable immune response.

Likewise children, particularly newborns are developing immune systems and are increasingly vulnerable to infections and cross contamination immune responses.

There are risks involved with the early immunization. Problems that an informed parents would be wiser to delay or withdraw from until the appropriate checks and balances are in place.

Just as there isn't a pair of pants that will fit ten eclectic individuals exactly the same, so it is with immunization.

This is not an anti-immunization rant. Just a call for better preparedness from the medical field who themselves are immune to being held responsible should one's child become ill as a response to immunization.

[Alter Kocker]

I am going one step further. There have already been measles related deaths. I have proposed that if in the case of a child death due to infection passed from a non-immunized child to a child with a compromised immune system or a child younger than immunization age should carry a term of imprisonment for the parent of the non-immunized child. This is nothing short of criminally negligent homicide.

[anchell]

@Alter Kocker . . . I get it that you are a staunch supporter of vaccinating anyone and everyone.

So naturally any immunized child would be fully "protected" from contracting say the measles virus because she has been "immunized".

What then could possibly cause that same child and her virus resistant body to then contract something she is immune to. Is there some truth about immunization that you hold to and is reluctant to share. I'm guessing that being immunized means being fully protected.

btw. . . I've seen proposals to have infants a few days old be immunized. Surely there are serious ethical questions involved here.

[S M L]

When immunization is discussed one needs to maintain or assume a population-based viewpoint. Immunization is both a personal and a a public-health measure. There is no question whatever that population-wide programs of vaccination, combined with public health measures such as improved sanitation, the provision of clean water, the screening out of insect vectors of disease, has done more to advance the state of health of the human race than anything else. This is still the case.

When I was a small boy in yeshivah in Bensonhurst in the 50s and the Salk vaccine became available the kids were walked across the neighborhood to the local vaccination center in one of the public schools to have their shots.

Any Haredi on this board who feels differently about the value of immunization as a population health measure should Google "polio epidemic" and educate him or herself. People used to dread the hot months, used to avoid public swimming pools, lived in fear. Those days are gone except in Muslim hellholes where they kill health workers trying to vaccinate kids. Then stop the nonsense and get your kids vaccinated assuming the individual child has no specific contraindication. Yourselves, too, if you never were in the past.

[S M L]

While I'm at it: Google diptheria, smallpox and tetanus. Frighten yourselves sufficiently. Then act like responsible citizens of the society as a whole.

[lostamarble]

Geniuses....
If you don't like you neighborhood yeshiva's refusal to demand 100% vaccinations, then stroll over to your local public school. There, you will get 100% free tuition, 0% religion.....buuuuuuuut, they also allow exemptions from immunization.

So...........instead of railing against Rabbis, rail against the entire anti-vaccine movement.Demand that public school enforce a 100% vaccination rule. You may want to take on the ACLU as well. They'll show up the day you try to force an immunization.