Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, considered the leading authority in Israel’s Haredi Jewish society, on Tuesday met with Corona Czar Prof. Salman Zarka, who shared with him his concern that some of the teaching staff in the Haredi sector have not yet been vaccinated, especially in schools where children who are not of vaccination age (younger than 12 – DI), where the unvaccinated may cause the spread of the pandemic.
According to Kipa (הרב קנייבסקי: מורה ומחנכת שלא התחסנו שלא יבואו ללמד),Rabbi Kanievsky ruled that this is forbidden, and that vaccination is obligatory for men and women in the field of education. Rabbi Kanievsky added that principals should suspend teachers who have not been vaccinated. He stressed that the vaccines are “siata d’shmaya” (help from Heaven) and should be taken in order to prevent loss of Torah learning and sickness.
During the visit, the Corona Czae made sure to wear a mask, but Rabbi Kanievsky and his grandson and translator Yanki did not.
Corona Czar Zarka visited the home of the 99-year-old spiritual leader following the rising wave of morbidity in the Haredi public. Rabbi Kanievsky stressed that every person should strive in every way to avoid infecting and being infected, based on the verse “For your own sake, therefore, be most careful. (Deut. 4:15).”
Prof. Zarka is the Director of Ziv Medical Center in Tsfat, a Colonel in the IDF reserves, and a senior lecturer in the School of Public Health at Haifa University, as well as a senior lecturer in the Department of Military Medicine in the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. In 2019, Dr. Zarka was selected as one of the 12 torch-lighters at the annual Independence Day ceremony on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem.