May, 2015
For A More In-Depth Discussion, As Well As For The Full History Behind Each Of The People The Tiferess Yisroel Mentions, See My Handouts On This Topic, Go To: https://www.sefaria.org/sheets/177158?lang=bi
With the recent outbreak of measles (last year there were about 400 deaths per day), the subject and controversy surrounding vaccinations, while never quite dormant, once again resurfaced into the mainstream.
Potential contenders for the 2016 presidential race are being asked their views on the matter, and rabbanim are being asked by schools what, if anything, they need to or must do.
In this week’s column I will go through some of the halacha and history relating to vaccines. While a short column cannot do justice to this important subject, I hope it will at the very least serve to whet the readers’ appetitive and encourage the reader to research the matter in greater detail by perusing the source material provided at the end of this column.
I am keenly aware that many are quite passionate about this subject. Let me state that I am not a doctor. While I made the choice to vaccinate all my children right away, this column is simply to give a brief overview of some of the halachic matters this subject touches upon.
The debate regarding immunization and vaccines go back hundreds of years. One of the founding fathers of the United States, Benjamin Franklin, writing in his autobiography states:
“In 1736 I lost one of my sons, a fine boy of four years old, by the smallpox taken in the common way. I long regretted bitterly and still regret that I had not given it to him by inoculation. This I mention for the sake of the parents who omit that operation, on the supposition that they should never forgive themselves if a child died under it; my example showing that the regret may be the same either way, and that, therefore, the safer should be chosen.”
About eight years before the death of Mr. Franklin, in the city of Hazdeutsch, Rav Yisroel Lipshutz, was born. He would become the great Rav of Danzig (d.1861) but would be most famous for his magnum opus, the Tiferess Yisroel commentary to all of mishanyos. Virtually every Jewish home owns at least one set of mishnayos that contains this masterful work.
Aside from his commentary to the mishnayos themselves, this work is also celebrated for its careful and encyclopedic reviews and introductions to a number of complicated halachic themes and topics. As well, Rav Lipshitz would often give us a glimpse into matters pertaining to the science and medicine of his day. From the discovery of dinosaurs, the age of the universe and the dateline, the Tiferess Yisroel was unique in the subjects he tackled.
One of his most fascinating tangents of his is to be found to his commentary to Avos (chapter 3, first entry to Boaz). There he discusses the difference, in his view, between Jew and Gentile. Being that chazal make clear that, unlike other systems of faith, we believe that one need not be a member of our nation to enter olam habah (Sanhedrin 105, Rambam Hil. Melachim ch.8), he seeks to understand why, then, chazal in other places seem to describe Jews, and Jews alone, in certain positive categories.
Before he goes on to offer a beautiful explanation, and further theorize as to how indeed we are to view wonderful and law-abiding gentiles, he lists for us the many gentiles to whom we owe so much, sometimes even our lives, and how unfortunate it would be if we have a misguided sense of their standing in this world and the next.
Two examples he brings that stick out are Gutenberg, of the Gutenberg Press, without whom so much Torah could have been lost, and Edward Jenner, the creator of the first modernized Smallpox vaccine through which “tens upon tens of thousands were saved”.
I would even surmise that many of us would not be here reading this if not for Jenner’s vaccine.
The one ‘error’ here is that it was not ‘tens upon tens of thousands’ who were saved, rather, until this inoculation was created and used close to a half-a-million Europeans in the 18th century alone died due to Smallpox. In the first half of the 20th, due to many not having access to the vaccine, it had wiped out not a half-a-million people, but close to a half-billion people!
By the late 1970’s the World Health Organization was able to announce that the disease had been eradicated.
This was an amazing feat, considering the blight that had always been Smallpox – why, even one of the early Pharaohs (Ramses V, whose tomb was discovered about 100 years ago) was found to have traces of smallpox!
Although Smallpox no longer poses a threat in the classic sense, it is still a threat in warfare, and indeed the Israeli army immunized tens of thousands of its members in case, R’l, such a chemical attack take place.
Then as now there are risks related to vaccines. Flu vaccines carry a one or two in two million Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) risk. Some vaccines carry risk of allergic reaction. The measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, popularly known as MMR, has long been anecdotally tied to autism (the medical world, wit large strongly dismisses this last assertion).
Would halacha still sanction such inoculations?
For example, while the Salk polio vaccine carries no risk of contacting polio, it does not protect from giving small trace amounts to others; the Sabin polio vaccine however protects others as well, but indeed carries a small risk of infection in the one being immunized (about one in two million).
May one take such a risk?
Once again, we turn to the Tiferess Yisroel. In his commentary to Yoma (8:3 Boaz 3) that regarding ‘inoculation’ (a word he transliterates into Hebrew) where there is a one in one thousand chance of even death, it would be permitted as the risk of an outbreak is even worse.
While Rav Neurwirth did not feel that this was enough to obligate parents to inoculate their children (although it was certainly cause to urge them), Rav Elyashiv, at least regarding certain vaccinations, seemed to feel that parents have an obligation to do so (quoted by Rabbi Akiva Tatz in his Dangerous Diseases, Dangerous Therapies, p. 48 ff).
It is questionable if one can ever ignore a government law requiring vaccinations, as indicating by the last line in a published letter from a beis din in Lakewood to a school principle on this topic, and from shu’t Tzitz Eliezar 15:40.
Yet, many states have allowed an out through a religious exemption.
I have heard some claim that the rule of shomer pesaim Hashem ‘Hashem guards the simpletons’ -which teaches that certain accepted practices, even if they carry some risk, are allowed – should allow them to take on the risk of not inoculating their children.
This, in my view, is a specious argument.
For, even if they are correctly applying this rule (which alone seems fallacious as it pertains to vaccines, not to mention that it also puts others at risk) this does not mean that they must avoid it! For example, it is one thing to suggest that shomer pesaim allows one to smoke cigarettes, but quite another to assert that this rule, and ergo their religion, tells them that they must smoke!
In other words, even assuming their application of this rule is correct, it does not seem to fall under a religious exemption, in the sense that their religion demands that they refrain.
Further, if they are asking the state to go against their values (the state’s) because of their (the parents’) understanding of the Torah, then might I ask these parents to do the same? Challenge your own beliefs by reading the copious Torah halachic material on the subject, found listed below.
The greatest non-medical inoculation against disease, the most profound health security, is to surrender to an objective Torah view, no matter which side one stands on.
(I have only included the below the English articles on this subject, so that all the readers could have access to them)
1 – ‘Compelled to Inoculate: May Parents Refuse Vaccinations for Their Children?’ By: Rabbi Aaron E. Glatt, Dr. Fred Rosner, Rabbi Yitzchok Breitowitz, and Rabbi Zev Schostak
RJJ Journal of Contemporary Halacha
2 – ‘Vaacination In Jewish Law’ By: Rabbi Alfred Cohen
RJJ Journal of Contemporary Halacha
3 – ‘Vaccination in Halakhah and in Practice in the Orthodox Jewish Community’ By: Rabbi Asher Bush
Hakira: The Flatbush Journal of Jewish Law and Thought
‘Halachic Attitudes Toward Immunization’ By: Rabbi Yigal Shafran
Tradition Journal
4 –’Dangerous Disease and Dangerous Therapy in Jewish Medical Ethics: Principles and Practice’ By: Rabbi Dr. Akiva Tatz
Targum Press
5 –‘Vaccines In Halacha’ By: Rabbi Tzvi Hirch Haber
TorahLab
6 – ‘Halachic Aspects of Vaccinations’ By: Dr. Edward Reichman
Jewish Action
7 – ‘Vaccinations: An Exploration of their History, Development, and Halachic Ramifications’ By: Deborah Zharnest Journal of Torah and Science
Shul Chronicles 
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