Israel: Religious leaders evade accountability for hardline rulings against ‘unvaccinated’

Prominent Israeli rabbis who issued hardline rulings against “unvaccinated” Jews are ignoring legal challenges to their edicts in courts of Jewish law. Recently, an 8-page legal complaint against a pro-injection rabbi drafted by Jewish legal scholar Abba Horowitz went ignored by three different rabbinical courts, one of whom has the rabbi in question serving on its rabbinical board. 

Jewish law, which views government with a critical eye, is wholly vested in the rabbinate, whose authority is trusted by Jews often unquestioningly. 

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Israel’s government led the world in extreme policies such as extended lockdowns and mask mandates. But even as the country’s suicide rate spiked and police violently beat dissenters in public, many Jews obeyed the decrees when their rabbis reinforced the mandates and sometimes even encouraged the brutality. 

Speaking in 2020 about those who flouted the Israeli government’s lockdowns, Haifa seminary head Rabbi Avraham Kirschenbaum urged Israeli police to beat lockdown violators “ten times more”.  

"Police beating up those violating the law should do so ten times harder,” he said. “From this pulpit, I urge Israeli police to give ten times more beatings.” 

In his complaint obtained by America's Frontline News, Horowitz calls rabbis like Kirschenbaum to account for their dereliction of the halachic legal process. 

“The rabbis only supported the Ministry of Health and the prime minister in their draconian policies,” he wrote. “They supported the policy of closures and wearing masks without investigating and without asking what the truth is and what is the halacha. They backed closing businesses and closing synagogues without wondering if it was really true. They didn't sit as a tribunal to discuss, and they didn't make any effort to find out the scientific truth. They didn't listen to the other side at all and didn't investigate how it is possible to save lives in other ways. They succumbed to panic, they believed in the establishment, trusted them and fully cooperated with them.” 

When Pfizer created the COVID-19 injections in December 2020, the Israel government rushed to volunteer its citizens as experimental subjects. Those who refused to participate in the experiment were shunned, mocked, and discriminated against with state-sanctioned hostility. 

In August 2021, then-Prime Minister Naftali Bennett accused the unvaccinated of “walking around with a machine gun firing Delta variants at people.” Even after he banned them from malls, theatres, restaurants, driving tests, libraries, schools and kindergartens, he proposed publicly marking them by introducing special wristbands in malls. 

The government’s policy was unapologetically malignant, with Israel Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz admitting on hot mic that Israel’s “Green Pass” vaccine passports were a coercive measure and not science-based. 

“In Israel, ‘anti-vaxxers’ became public enemy number one,” writes researcher Dr. Josh Guetzkow. “Many news anchors and media personalities said that anti-vaxxers were murderers or no better than murderers.” 

But while such hostility is contrary to Torah law, many Jews embraced it when rabbis encouraged such mistreatment, such as Rabbi Dr. Aryeh Hirsch. Last year, Hirsch called for “stiff penalties” on the unvaccinated, who he says are “nuts” and “should not be tolerated.” Hirsch also urged coerced vaccinations.  

“They did not sit with experts in the field of these vaccines (if any) or with epidemiologists to find out if this is true,” continued Horowitz. “And worst of all, they believed Pfizer as if it were a company with only good intentions.” 

Horowitz also notes that the rabbis knew that neither Pfizer nor the State of Israel would be held accountable if people were injured from the vaccine, which offered little to no protection for low-risk populations. 

When the Ministry of Health banned cheap, effective early treatments like ivermectin – with which Horowitz himself was treated successfully – the rabbinate did not intervene. 

One prominent national religious leader, Rabbi Yaakov Ariel, made particularly incendiary comments when he ruled that a non-injected Jew has the legal status of a murderer. 

“The rabbi encouraged those who are vaccinated to throw the ‘unvaccinated’ out of the synagogue and not allow them to go to the Torah, to pray or any other ritual,” states Horowitz, also noting that such measures for personal medical choices are unprecedented in Jewish history.  

“Rabbi Ariel encourages every Jew to get vaccinated against COVID, even those who are not in any danger at all. This leads me to ask: Who will take responsibility if even one Jew dies from the vaccine, G-d forbid? Who will take responsibility if the vaccine destroys the fertility of our young? 

“He ruled without sources, without medical knowledge, without mercy, without anything. This act borders on bloodshed.” 

Horowitz submitted 13 reasons why Rabbi Ariel’s statements were Judaically illegal, chief of which is that the spiritual leader receives money from the state. This in effect makes him a “state servant” and creates a conflict of interest, raising questions if the rabbi is too loyal to the state to impartially judge a government mandate. 

Furthermore, “no rabbi has the authority to compel any person to inject an experimental genetic drug into his body,” argues Horowitz. He brought sources from the Talmud and its exegetes supporting bodily autonomy, including “A man knows his body more than a hundred doctors."  

“In this new ‘vaccination’ field, the doctor has no expertise and only the individual knows what is good for his body, and he is responsible for deciding for himself,” explained Horowitz. 

Next, there was the matter of the injection’s harmful effects, for which neither Pfizer, the State of Israel, nor Rabbi Ariel are culpable. 

“The vaccine is harmful - this is a fact. And there is no one to sue for the damages, and as long as we cannot sue Pfizer or the state for bodily harm, we must not take this vaccine.” 

Other arguments brought by Horowitz include the Jewish legal requirement that laws concerning murderers must be judged by a court of 23 judges; Rabbi Ariel lacks understanding of the injection’s mRNA technology and blindly trusts the state; and vaccines prevent disease, in which case the vaccinated are protected. 

Horowitz also quoted Rabbi Ariel as saying, "I hereby call on parents not to be silent! The right to the health of our children is better than the 'individual right' of teachers to infect our children and endanger their lives, G-d forbid!" 

But as Horowitz pointed out, “There is no risk to children at all. There is no mortality and in most cases there are not even symptoms. The rabbi did not research the issue and it is a shame that he writes things that are not true and causes a wide audience to act against the position of the Torah on the matter.”  

According to a ruling in the Talmud, a substance can still be considered lethal if it kills one out of ten people. So, too, says Horowitz, most people surviving the vaccine does not legally make it safe enough to be forced on others. 

“We already know that there are many cases of side effects and deaths that are not reported in the news,” continues the complaint. “I myself know endless cases. It is worth looking at VAERS in the United States, which reports only 1% of the cases of a side effect, and despite this, the numbers that are reported are shocking (in Israel doctors are not allowed to report side effects, which in itself is a bright red flag). If we follow Rabbi Ariel's ruling and get vaccinated, including the children, who will we sue if these people are harmed by it? Rabbi Ariel? The country?” 

“Therefore,” concludes Horowitz, “I consider it right to sue Rabbi Yaakov Ariel in court and demand that he immediately stop ruling on COVID-19 and repeating the crime he committed. He simply does not understand how much damage he is doing to the people of Israel. 

“I also ask the representatives of the Beit Din to establish a body of 23 rabbis to sit and discuss religion and law as a small Sanhedrin, and decide once and for all on matters of COVID-19 and vaccinations according to the way of the Torah.” 

But Horowitz’s complaint is being disregarded by the rabbinate. 

America’s Frontline News reached out to the Eretz Hemdah – Gazit Jewish court, on whose rabbinical board Rabbi Ariel serves. The court did not respond to a request for comment on the complaint. 

The Jewish court in Kiryat Sefer, Israel also did not respond to Horowitz’s complaint and could not be reached for comment. 

America’s Frontline News will continue reporting on religious leaders who use their pulpits to persuade followers to submit to being injected without consulting dissenting medical experts or conducting exhaustive research.