JERUSALEM (JNS) – Rabbis in Israel are launching a campaign against COVID-19 vaccine refusal, including a recent rabbinical ruling that unvaccinated individuals may not enter synagogues, participate in a minyan or be called to the Torah.
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Chief Rabbi of Ramat Gan Yaakov Ariel, considered one of the leading Religious Zionist halachic authorities, has ruled that members of the community who decline to be vaccinated must face consequences for their actions, as they are endangering others.
“A person who does not get vaccinated goes against Jewish law, which demands that people remain healthy. We need to demand that everyone be vaccinated,” decreed Ariel.
“We must demand that unvaccinated people stay away from others. They should show respect by staying home and not infecting others. If someone like this arrives at a place where others are gathered, he [or she] must be asked to leave. Of course not through violence, but he must not be allowed to remain [inside],” wrote Ariel.
“We must make the simple demand: do not cause us harm,” he added.
Ariel underscored that individuals who refuse to be vaccinated “must not be allowed into synagogues, to participate in a minyan, or be called to the Torah.” He said they could stay home or pray outside the synagogue.
Ariel joins a number of other leading rabbinical authorities in Israel who have adopted an almost unprecedented stance against vaccine refusal. This week, Rabbi Yitzhak Yehuda Yaroslavsky, a senior rabbi in the Chabad movement and head of the rabbinical court, also ruled that unvaccinated worshippers may not enter synagogues.
In related news, an unusual incident took place this week at a Torah lesson given by Rabbi Ben Zion Mutzafi. During the lesson, the rabbi argued with a student who claimed that “the Jewish people are not a laboratory.”
An outraged Mutzafi threw the student out. “More than 6,500 people have died,” the rabbi told him. “Stop with your nonsense.”
This article first appeared in Israel Hayom.
If you are vaccinated then why cant you be around people who are not vaccinated? What is the point of a vaccine? Just asking..
Why is it imperative to listen to some rabbis and not others. Fake Frumkeit
You would think that the love for another Jew should be so great that even though, they don’t want to vaccinate and according to those Rabbis opinions they are doing something wrong, you would think that the right thing to do would be for the rabbis to find a way to allow the unvaccinated to form their own minyanim. But that wasn’t the Rabbis conclusion. Interesting times.
Divrei Torah b’nachas neshmaiim.
It is important to know from which communities these Rabbis come.
“Rabbi Ben-Tzion Abba Shaul [is] one of the most prominent ideologues of the Mizrahi-haredi scholar-society and among the most prominent rabbinical figures of the haredi-Mizrahi stream.”
We are obviously living in the times of ikvesa diMeshicha.
HaEmes tihei ne’ederes, Chazal say, about this time. The truth will be hidden. It is, indeed, so hidden today.
There is, of course, natural immunity, and, as the student rightly said, the Jewish people are indeed NOT a laboratory. Even President Trump, who got these vaccines started, blasted the third dose as simply money-making.
This truth seems to be hidden from some of both “Religious Zionists” and Chabad.
Ich meant: ‘Divrei chachamim’.
Anyway, many, many rabbanim have openly come out against the ‘poison-death-shot’ a long time ago. The ‘org’ site ‘rodefshalom613’ is one of these with letters and videos.
I hate this shot too.And I think its junk science with no data for those who already had covid. Everybody just yells science but no data exists to prove you need that shot. And you will get ill for 3 days form this shot. So not fun.
That all being said if this is the price we pay for our essential needs of social interaction lets pay the price and get the jab. As panful as it is you won’t become autistic or die. Lets do this to shut up all the yellers who get mad every time we attend a wedding etc..
oy.