For God’s Sake, Get Vaccinated

Should we get vaccinated for the coronavirus? Yes. Absolutely yes. Without a question: Yes. Jewish law gives the highest priority to safety and health, and it requires everyone to take advantage of this potentially life-saving shot.

I wish that this short answer would be enough, and I could stop writing right here. Unfortunately, there is a great deal of vaccine hesitancy in our country, such as within the ultra-Orthodox community.

This hesitancy surfaced first in Lakewood, New Jersey, in 2008. A school was concerned that a substantial number of their students were not properly vaccinated. The school received a rabbinic ruling allowing them to exclude students who were not vaccinated, and a group of prominent rabbis and doctors penned a public letter urging the community to vaccinate their children. Since then, vaccine hesitation in the Orthodox community has led to several outbreaks of mumps and measles, with multiple hospitalizations and fatalities.

Despite these deaths, anti-vaccination views persist in parts of the Orthodox community. In May 2019, there was an anti-vaccination rally in Monsey, which was attended by hundreds of people. Today, opponents of childhood vaccinations are now leading the campaign against the coronavirus vaccination, and they have been far more successful in undermining confidence in the new vaccines.

The roots of vaccination hesitancy in the ultra-Orthodox community come from skepticism of science and medicine. There is a longstanding opposition to all secular studies, including science; unfamiliarity with science ultimately leads to contempt and suspicion.

But there is a second element to this hesitancy, which is rooted in a comment to this week’s Torah reading by Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman (Ramban), a thirteenth-century Spanish rabbi and commentator. The Ramban wrote, “When the Jewish People are in a state of spiritual perfection… they will have no need of doctors, nor will they have to follow medical procedures even as precautionary measures, ‘For I, God, am your healer.’” The Ramban argued that hidden miracles are constantly possible, and if a person truly perfects themselves, they can live in a world of Divine healing, without doctors, medications and health insurance. The Ramban’s misgivings about medicine are misgivings about a natural world, which is imperfect, accident-prone and random; in his view, these flaws are due to our disconnection from God.

Even so, the Ramban recognized that to rely on prayer is impractical, and at the end of his remarks, he counseled that one should not rely on miracles and see a doctor when needed. (The Ramban was a doctor himself.) However, other rabbis took the Ramban’s view a step further and said that one can refuse medical interventions and pray instead. Rav Nachman of Breslov, a nineteenth-century Hasidic Master, wrote that the only reason why a person would need to chase after medical therapies is because they lack faith “and God forbid [that they search for therapies], but rather they should place their full trust in prayer and supplications.” The Avnei Nezer, who passed away in 1910, argued that one can refuse to consult doctors or accept their advice because the opinions of doctors are unreliable, and one would be better off with prayer.

The roots of Orthodox anti-vaccination rhetoric begin right here, with a misplaced understanding of faith. To properly respond, one must first grapple with a fundamental question: Why shouldn’t we rely on prayer alone?

Well, to start with, ignoring medical advice is impractical. There are religious groups, like Christian Scientists, who have relied exclusively on faith healing and refused medical attention. Sadly, Christian Science cemeteries are filled with children whose lives could have been saved with a simple prescription for penicillin. (Due to dwindling membership, the Christian Science Church reversed itself in 2010 and began to allow adherents to seek medical attention.)

Any attempt by humans to live as angels will fail. For this reason, the Torah commands us to fence off roofs to prevent accidents, “so that you do not bring bloodguilt upon your house if anyone should fall from it” (Deuteronomy 22:8). This Torah passage declares that one must not ignore the realities of nature, ever. Even if our souls can soar, our bodies can’t fly.

Even if our souls can soar, our bodies can’t fly.

Maimonides harshly criticized those who think that prayer can be a substitute for medicine. He wrote that “according to their mistaken and idiotic imagining, if a hungry man assuages his hunger with bread and thus overcomes the ‘sickness of hunger,’ shall we say of him that he has thereby forsaken his trust and belief in God?” Hunger is natural, and so is disease, and both demand a practical response. A man of God must not be a naive fool.

The simple reason to embrace modern medicine (and vaccinations in particular) is that they are effective. But I want to offer a different argument: These vaccinations are profoundly spiritual as well.

Rav Soloveitchik wrote that God left creation incomplete so that humanity can fix the world and thereby become God’s partner in creation. An incomplete world will have disease; it is our God-given responsibility to cure those diseases.

Medicine is holy work, an act that completes God’s creation. For this reason, Jews have always had a passion for medicine. Many medieval rabbis were also medical professionals, and they saw this as part of their religious calling. In “Jews, Medicine, and Medieval Society,” Joseph Shatzmiller reveals that there were regions in Medieval Europe where less than 1% of the population was Jewish, yet Jews were over 50% of the doctors.

There’s a long Jewish history to the proud phrase “my son, the doctor,” and this is partly because of the Jewish yearning to make the world a better place. We don’t only connect to God through prayer; we can also connect to God through healing and compassion. The scientists, doctors and nurses that cure disease are making the world a better place — and doing God’s work.

There is an old joke about a man who prays to God to save him from an incoming flood. Because of his deep faith that God alone will save him, he first ignores a canoe, then a motorboat and finally a helicopter that offer to save him. After he drowns, the man goes up to heaven. He confronts God and asks why God didn’t come to his rescue. God responds, “Of course I tried to save you. I sent you a canoe, a motorboat and a helicopter. You just didn’t take them.”

This past December God sent us a vaccine. I have been inspired by the pictures and videos of rabbis around the world saying prayers and blessings right before getting their shot, thanking God for the goodness of their fellow man. And those prayers recognize God’s part in this man-made miracle. In the last year, an army of researchers, doctors and nurses have worked tirelessly to vaccinate the world and save lives. They are doing God’s work. So for God’s sake, please take the vaccine.

Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz is the Senior Rabbi of Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun in New York.