NEW YORK LETTER
Closed due to measles. The Jewish Preschool in Ross Street, Brooklyn, could not accommodate, Monday, April 15, the 250 or so children aged 3 to 5 that it usually sees. By decision of the health services of the town hall, which imposed the administrative closure.
The United Talmudical Academy refused to provide documents proving that students and teachers not vaccinated against measles had been excluded from the facility. “The challenge with this particular school is that it was unable or unwilling to provide the required documents during our visit”, explained Oxiris Barbot, head of health at the town hall, who also gave notice of twenty-two other creches and Talmudic schools (yeshiva) accused of not respecting this requirement.
While measles was declared eradicated in 2000 in the United States, New York City is in the throes of an epidemic; 329 cases, mostly children, have been diagnosed since October 2018, mostly in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish quarter of Williamsburg and in Rockland County, north of the metropolis.
State of health emergency
The epidemic started when unvaccinated children returned from Israel after celebrating the feast of Sukkot. No death is to be deplored, but six patients had to be admitted to intensive care in hospital. For months, the town hall has been fighting to have all the children in this community vaccinated, without much success.
As a result, on April 9, the city’s mayor, Bill de Blasio, declared a state of health emergency in the neighborhood of Williamsburg, requiring everyone to be vaccinated. With, with the key, a possible fine of 1000 dollars (885 euros).
“This is the epicenter of a very, very worrying measles epidemic and must be treated immediately”, said de Blasio before adding: “Our hope or our goal is not to impose fines. We just want to fix the problem. ” The next day, twenty health inspectors disembarked to examine the school vaccination records.
One of the challenges is not to make this crisis a religious affair, when most Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn are vaccinated and the rabbis are mostly in favor. “For me, it’s not a Jewish problem. It turns out that the epidemic is concentrated in one Jewish community, but it could have broken out in any other under-vaccinated community ”, says Jeffrey Dinowitz, Jew, Member of Parliament for the State of New York, recalling that an epidemic has broken out in Washington State: “It was not a Jewish community. “
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