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Agudath Israel of America is deeply concerned about the recent measles epidemic and the threat it poses to communities across the country.
For this reason, countless personalities and rabbinical leaders, including senior rabbis of the Agudath Israel movement and physicians serving these communities, have repeatedly encouraged immunization under the most stringent conditions. Indeed, the vast majority of children enrolled in Jewish schools are vaccinated. Government records indicate that measles immunization rates in the yeshivos in Williamsburg, Borough Park, and New York State are high, with yeshiva averages greater than 96 percent. Similarly, high rates have been achieved in areas of the country with a large Jewish population. While vaccination rates in some schools and preschool children may be lower, vaccination is the clear societal norm in Orthodox Jewish communities.
Agudath Israel sees with the same concern another element that has spread with this disease: infectious hate. Our public discourse is depreciated when individuals and media point to the blame for the spread of measles outright – and sometimes violently – against the "ultra-Orthodox" community. Social media comments have been particularly appalling in this regard. It's time to meet and collaborate to meet a challenge. There is no excuse for using a public health problem – an epidemic we are suffering from – as a platform from which to launch poison antisemitic rhetoric. The motive for this hatred becomes clear from statistics showing that areas of acute orthodox Jewish outbreaks have vaccination rates equivalent to those of many other municipalities.
The eradication of these two scourges – disease and hate – demands our immediate response.
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