BNEI BRAK, Israel – Israel’s attempt to suppress a severe pandemic has clashed with a hard-hit ultra-Orthodox community that has proven it is resistant to blockades and suspicious of the country’s mass vaccination campaign.
On Sunday, thousands of ultra-Orthodox mourners attended two funerals of famous rabbis who died of the coronavirus. The mourners banned public gatherings of no more than 10 people on the same day that the Israeli cabinet included a strict closure banning all international flights. Thousands of men dressed in black wool hats and suits gathered, many without masks, images of the occasion. For fear of violence, the police withdrew from arrests, while some of the leading Israeli politicians were greedy.
“This is what unequal enforcement looks like,” said Benny Gantz, Secretary of Defense and head of the Blue and White Party. “Millions of families and children are locked up in their homes, keeping to the rules as thousands of hairdressers gather for the funeral, most even without masks,” he used the Hebrew word for ultra-Orthodox.
The funerals followed the anti-lockdown protests in Bnei Brak and other ultra-Orthodox cities a week earlier, in which ultra-Orthodox men threw stones at police, set fire to garbage lists and knocked down street nameplates and light poles.
Many of the mourners who had gathered for the funeral of a rabbi on Sunday in Jerusalem wore no face masks.
Photo:
Ariel Schalit / Associated Press
Israeli health officials have also struggled to attract ultra-Orthodox to take a Covid-19 vaccine. Although much of Israel has been vaccinated for vaccinations, the ultra-Orthodox population is slower to get on board, and some question the safety of the vaccine, while others suggest that the country’s citizens are being used to test its effectiveness.
“It’s not a vaccine. It’s an experiment, ”said Izhar Mahpud, a 57-year-old resident of Bnei Brak, an ultra-Orthodox city just east of Tel Aviv, who was hit hardest by Covid-19 in the country. “I’m not ready to be a rat in a lab.”
Israel aims to vaccinate a large part of its population and get the economy going by March, so that the small nation along the Mediterranean can be a world window to fight the deadly virus. But the ultra-Orthodox have undermined the lofty goals, mainly by making closures and scaring off vaccines.
Israel’s ultra-Orthodox make up about 12% of the population, but are responsible for almost one – third of the country’s coronavirus infections. Israel currently has 68,331 active cases of coronavirus with new infections moving about 7,000 a day.
Officials are scrambling to get the latest boom under control. A British variant of the virus accounts for about 70% of current coronavirus infections, even though nearly one-third of Israelis have received the first dose of vaccination. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu banned all international flights last month and lawmakers on Sunday passed a bill doubling fines for lock-in violations.
Ultra-Orthodox Jews quarreled with Israeli police officers last month during a protest over the restriction of coronavirus closure in Ashdod.
Photo:
Oded Balilty / Associated Press
Public health officials say the ultra-Orthodox community is particularly vulnerable to the fast-moving virus. Their large families usually live in crowded apartments and traditionally avoid electronic communications that help obtain information about the vaccines.
The data from the Israeli Ministry of Health show that the ultra-Orthodox of Israel are being vaccinated at a lower rate than other groups. Among those over 60, for whom the campaign was the longest, 85% of all Israelis took the vaccine, compared to 78% of Israel’s ultra-Orthodox.
According to Erant Segal, a computational biologist at the Weizmann Institute of Science, ultra-Orthodox and Arab villages lagged behind due to the lower vaccination rates, according to Eran Segal, a computational biologist at the Weizmann Institute of Science. “This is going to slow down the decline of the pandemic,” he said. Segal said.
Health officials say infections in ultra-Orthodox communities have declined in recent days as some leading rabbis have endorsed vaccinations. Efforts are also being made to combat misinformation and get residents to take the vaccine.
In the large ultra-Orthodox city of Bnei Brak, local officials have set up a war room. In the oval room with wooden panels on the top floor of the town hall, with portraits of important religious figures along the walls, young ultra-Orthodox sit around a large circular table with large jugs of hand sanitizer and work the telephones. They stare at spreadsheets with information about everyone who has been vaccinated or not.
Officials called nearly 10,000 people who had not been vaccinated – and spoke to nearly 7,000 of them. About 5,000 said they wanted a vaccine but had not yet succeeded. Another 1500 or so did not want to be vaccinated. The city officials are working to overcome obstacles that arise during the calls.
For those who do not drive to a vaccination center, they arrange one. If prospective vaccine recipients are unable to contact their health insurance providers, they will also help. And if someone who reaches them does not want to take the vaccine, they notice why.
Avi Blumenthal, who is leading the health ministry’s outreach to the ultra-Orthodox, said he and his staff search through lists of Israel’s ultra-Orthodox villages to find the rabbis who are against vaccination and seek answers. In one case, an ultra-Orthodox community in Jerusalem had low vaccination rates, which is largely attributed to the rabbi’s alleged anti-vaccine attitude. But when health officials interviewed the rabbi, they learned that he was actually pro-vaccine – someone had spread a rumor attributed to him that the vaccine was dangerous.
A Jewish ultra-Orthodox man was vaccinated against coronavirus in Jerusalem last month.
Photo:
abir sultan / epa / Shutterstock
Yehuda Shaish, 63, who runs four ultra-Orthodox schools in Bnei Brak and nearby towns, said he waited until the rabbis blessed the vaccines. “After the rabbis approved it, I went happily,” he said.
Even with the blessings of the rabbis, many ultra-Orthodox remain skeptical about vaccines. Yedidya Hasson, 28, who runs a network of 30,000 WhatsApp groups in which some members questioned the wisdom of vaccinations and coronavirus restrictions, says he will not take the vaccine at least for now because he is afraid of possible health risks.
“When it comes to vaccines,” he said, “I think the media in Israel is hiding the truth.”
Some ultra-Orthodox leaders say that mistrust in the community can help explain vaccine resistance and recent manifestations of civil disobedience, but that mistrust does not justify violating rules that endanger public health. “You expect religious men to be moral,” said Rabbi Dov Halbertal, a prominent ultra-Orthodox advocate and commentator. “But when it comes to the biggest test of saving lives, we fail.”
Israel says it is on track to vaccinate everyone over 16 by the end of March. To understand how the small country so quickly vaccinated more of its population than any other, WSJ visited clinics that give shots to young and middle-aged citizens. Photo: Tamir Elterman for The Wall Street Journal
Write to Felicia Schwartz by [email protected]
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