Prominent rabbi said he did not know that his ParCare vaccination was illegal

Prominent rabbi said he did not know that his ParCare vaccination was illegal

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Rabbi Herschel Schachter, a leading modern Orthodox rabbi who received a COVID-19 vaccine on Thursday at a clinic now under investigation for improperly administering the vaccine, said he was led to believe the vaccination was correct.
Schachter and Rabbi Mordecai Willig, both chief professors at Yeshiva University and senior officials in Jewish law, were photographed receiving the vaccine through the 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 members of the public before it was allowed and may have obtained the vaccines “fraudulently”.

The fact that health professionals and residents and elderly teams are the first to receive vaccines has been widely publicized. Before an online Torah class on Sunday night, Schachter said that he and Willig had asked if the vaccines offered to them were legal and legitimate and that they hoped to encourage others to be vaccinated by publicizing their own vaccines.

“We were led to believe so,” he said. He added: “If any of us had heard that this was inappropriate, that it was not legitimate, we would not have done it.”

Schachter, already an authority sought in matters of Jewish law for decades, became an open leader calling for compliance with pandemic guidelines at the start of the crisis. He issued dozens of Jewish legal opinions in writing during the spring and summer, addressing a number of issues involving Jewish ritual and social detachment and frequently encouraged the use of masks. Earlier this month, he said in a podcast that jumping in line to get a vaccine was not allowed under Jewish law.

He and Willig were photographed receiving the vaccine, Schachter said, to inspire confidence in the vaccine.

“You all realize that I think it is very important that we all get this vaccine,” he said on Sunday.

BoroPark24, a Yiddish news service, reported on December 21 that ParCare had obtained 3,500 doses of the vaccine produced by Moderna and would vaccinate 500 people that day. ParCare’s CEO, a Hasidic businessman named Gary Schlesinger, told BoroPark24 that ParCare was allowed to vaccinate patients and that only people over 60 or with underlying diseases would be eligible in the beginning. The next day, Schlesinger retweeted a photo of himself receiving the vaccine.

On Saturday, New York State Health Commissioner Howard Zucker said on Saturday that state police would investigate ParCare and the people associated with it. Schlesinger deleted the photograph of his own vaccination sometime after that.

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