Prominent rabbi said he does not know his ParCare vaccination is illegal

Prominent rabbi said he does not know his ParCare vaccination is illegal

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Rabbi Herschel Schachter, a leading modern Orthodox rabbi who received a COVID-19 vaccine on Thursday in a clinic now under investigation for improperly administering the vaccine, said he believes the vaccination is on board wash.
Schachter and Rabbi Mordecai Willig, both senior lecturers at Yeshiva University and important authorities on Jewish law, were photographed getting the vaccine through ParCare Community Health Network, a network of clinics serving Orthodox communities in and around New York City. State health officials say ParCare gave the vaccine to the public before it was allowed, and possibly got the vaccines “fraudulent”.

The fact that health workers and residents and nursing homes and staff are the first to receive the vaccines has been widely publicized. Before an online Torah lesson Sunday night, Schachter said he and Willig both asked if the vaccines they were offered were legal and legal and that they hoped to encourage others to be vaccinated by announcing their own vaccinations.

“We were led to believe that it was so,” he said. He added: “If one of us had been told it was inappropriate, that it was not legal, we would not have done it.”

Schachter, which has been a prestigious authority on Jewish law matters for decades, became an outspoken leader and insisted early in the crisis on complying with the guidelines for pandemic. During the spring and summer, he issued dozens of written Jewish legal opinions and addressed a number of questions regarding Jewish rituals and social distance, and he regularly encouraged the wearing of masks. Earlier this month, he said on a podcast that according to Jewish law, it was not allowed to jump in line to get a vaccine.

He and Willig were taken down to get the vaccine, Schachter said, creating confidence in the vaccine.

“You all realize that it’s important to me that we all take this vaccine,” he said on Sunday.

BoroPark24, a Jewish news service, reported on December 21 that ParCare had received 3,500 doses of the vaccine Moderna had manufactured and would vaccinate 500 people that day. ParCare CEO, a Hasidic businessman named Gary Schlesinger, told BoroPark24 that ParCare had been given permission to vaccinate patients and that only people over 60 or with underlying conditions would be eligible initially. The next day, Schlesinger received a photo of himself receiving the vaccine again.

New York State Health Commissioner Howard Zucker said on Saturday that state police would investigate ParCare and its associates. Schlesinger removed the photo of his own vaccination sometime thereafter.

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