We have the incredible fortune afforded to us by God to have a vaccine, but many of us still contemplate the move despite the fact that Halacha mandates we inoculate against the virus.

During my visits to coronavirus wards at hospitals across the country, I encountered a most worrying statistic. All of the hospitalized were relatively young people that had not been vaccinated. A few minutes after one such visit, I learned that a childhood friend of mine, a healthy individual with no pre-existing conditions, had died. That morning, he had found it difficult to breathe, and by 5:00 p.m., he headed downstairs to the ambulance waiting to take him to the hospital. By 2:00 a.m. the next morning, he was gone.

These visits and this news have led me to call on all of you to get vaccinated.

We have the incredible fortune afforded to us by God to have a vaccine, but many of us still contemplate the move despite the fact that Halacha mandates we inoculate against the virus.

According to senior physicians in Israel and around the world, the vaccine is the best answer to the virus. The risk of the virus is certain. The risks posed by the vaccine are in question. These doctors' unequivocal position has been that we must vaccinate unless instructed otherwise by a doctor.

I wonder who gave certain individuals the courage to play with people's lives. How can irresponsible people try and undermine something that has been proven to save lives? Unfortunately, this phenomenon of convention-breaking is not just typical of our battle with the coronavirus; we see this in many other fields. Those same people who work so hard to prevent people from getting the vaccine bear no responsibility for the public. While they say they want to preserve their rights, they are in fact harming their fellow man. Read more at IH