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| NY State Senator, James Skoufis (UWI) |
So says the headline in the Jerusalem Post. That drew the ire of NY State Senator, James Skoufis which according to UWI was expressed as follows in a tweet (since deleted):
Skoufis specifically mentioned yeshivas in Ramapo, a town in Rockland County, has having “a history of non-compliance with the state’s vaccine laws.”
The senator stressed that “Additional enforcement is required in light of today’s news.
The Jerusalem Post notes that: Ramapo is one of the Five Towns of Rockland County, in which the source said there are over 120 Yeshivas.
I join those criticizing Senator Skoufis. Among them Rockland County activist Yossi Gestetner who tweeted back calling Skoufis’ tweet “hateful and inflammatory.”
Perhaps. But there is a reason he singled out this community in his own district for criticism which Gestener actually conceded:
“People have real concerns about vaccines,” he told the Jewish Week... He acknowledged vaccine hesitancy among the Orthodox of Rockland County, but stressed that this is not unique to that community.
That others have a bad attitude does not excuse this community from having one. The Jewish Week added the following:
According to state data, 60% of Rockland County children have received all three doses of the polio vaccine by age 2, the recommended timeline for vaccination. Nationally, more than 92% of children are fully vaccinated by that age. Last year, Rockland County’s rate of completion of the childhood vaccination schedule, which protects against a range of diseases, was 42%, the lowest in the state.
Since Rockland County is a large part of Skoufis district, his criticism is not all that unreasonable. After all why was it an unvaccinated Orthodox Jew in his jurisdiction that for the first time in 10 years contracted Polio? This case of Polio would not have happened had he been vaccinated against it.
I have to ask what makes a larger percentage of Orthdodx Jews so quick to embrace this antivax foolishness? Why do they join all the kooks in the world that distrust mainstream science that has diligently studied vaccines and determined them to be safe and effective? Why would someone choose not to vaccinate a child against a dreaded disease like Polio? Is over sixty years of safe and effective inoculation - nearly eradicating the disease not enough for them? What is it that motivates so many Orthodox Jews be so antivax?
I have no clue. But allow me to speculate. Perhaps it is a sense that a lot of Charedi Jews simply don’t trust a world whose values are so opposite of their own. Perhaps science has recently been so vilified by some of Orthodoxy’s rabbinic leaders that they have lost any faith they might have once had. They might not trust a government that has in the past allowed the medical community to be unethical by treatment of minorities that were used as human guinea pigs to test unproven dangerous vaccines and medications.
I suppose that gravitating to alternative theories about health becomes more attractive to them because of that. Especially when they can quote the occasional ‘quack’ with an MD and/or PhD who uses outdated and/or discredited studies to ‘explain’ why vaccinations are so harmful. Thereby ‘vindicating’ their vaccine hesitancy - rationalizing that the dangers of vaccines outweigh the benefits.
Like I said, I don’t really know. I can’t explain it. But there has to be a reason that a greater proportion of Orthodox Jews are antivax than the proportion of the rest of the country. It just doesn’t make sense that a people known for their intelligence can be so stupid
