The Jewish NYC teachers who want a religious exemption from COVID vaccines

• Author: PHILISSA CRAMER/JTA
• Published date: 05 October 2021
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

Instead, she asked Michoel Green, a Chabad rabbi who has openly opposed vaccination, to submit the required letter from a clergy member. 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.

"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.

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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.

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. 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 vast majority of New York City educators were vaccinated before Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the mandate Aug. 23, and most of the rest have been vaccinated since. But thousands of teachers were still unvaccinated on Friday when US 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.

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. 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."

Those guidelines are more complicated to apply when it comes to Judaism than in some religions, such as Catholicism, where doctrine is set centrally. (The Pope has endorsed...