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“I don’t think that Judaism is a monolith, and I don’t think that really any religious leader of any faith can speak for all people within that religion,” she told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Saturday night. That does not sway Stephanie Edmonds, a Jewish 10th-grade global history teacher who does not want to be vaccinated. But many more Orthodox rabbis have gone on the record as endorsing vaccination, including through concerted campaigns aimed at raising vaccination rates in Orthodox communities Yeshiva University, the flagship school of Modern Orthodoxy, is requiring its students and staff to be vaccinated. (The Pope has endorsed vaccination requirements.) In Judaism, major denominations issue guidelines for their members, but individual rabbis make rulings for their communities, and disagreements are common.Īll of the major non-Orthodox denominations have issued statements endorsing COVID-19 vaccines, and in the Orthodox world, where public health guidelines related to COVID-19 have been more hotly debated, a list has been circulating on social media of Orthodox rabbis who have expressed opposition to vaccination either publicly or privately, including some in Borough Park. Those guidelines are more complicated to apply when it comes to Judaism than in some religions, such as Catholicism, where doctrine is set centrally.
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Exemption-seekers are required to submit a letter from a clergy member, and a binding agreement between the city and union lays out that “requests shall be denied where the leader of the religious organization has spoken publicly in favor of the vaccine … or where the objection is personal, political or philosophical in nature.” While teachers may apply for religious exemptions to the vaccine mandate, an option sought by their union, city officials made clear that they did not intend to approve them freely. Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor declined to consider a lawsuit on their behalf, meaning that if they did not get their first shot over the weekend, they must either go on unpaid leave or resign with severance. But thousands of teachers were still unvaccinated on Friday when U.S. 23, and most of the rest have been vaccinated since. The vast majority of New York City educators were vaccinated before Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the mandate Aug.
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That meant she became one of potentially thousands of city teachers barred from their classrooms once the vaccine mandate, the most sweeping in the country, went into effect Monday. The city education department had not ruled on her request for an exemption by Sunday, and Rivera, who is nine months pregnant, had not changed her mind about getting vaccinated. Rivera is part of a vocal minority of Jews arguing that their religious beliefs preclude them from being vaccinated, even as leaders within all of the major Jewish denominations have endorsed the COVID-19 vaccines. “I’m not going to lie, when the Chabad community, when the political establishment is going against you for speaking out and for having a unique voice, then you’re probably doing something right,” said Rivera, who teaches physical education at an elementary school in an affluent neighborhood of Brooklyn. Based in Massachusetts, Green was disaffiliated by a Chabad organization because of his anti-vaccination social media posts and has become a folk hero for some Orthodox Jews who oppose vaccines. Instead, she asked Michoel Green, a Chabad rabbi who has openly opposed vaccination, to submit the required letter from a clergy member. ( JTA) - When Rivka Taub Rivera decided to apply for a religious exemption to New York City’s vaccine mandate for teachers, she didn’t turn to the rabbis of Borough Park, the Orthodox neighborhood in Brooklyn where she lives.