Rav Shmuel Kaminetsky claims that vaccinations are harmful

Rav Shmuel Kaminetsky

Baltimore Jewish Times    Read the whole article including the comments

[...] R.B. encountered significant difficulties when she claimed a religious exemption at a local boys’ day school. Before her son began school, she contacted someone at the state Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, as well as the state attorney general’s office, to inquire about Maryland’s laws regarding religious exemptions.

“They said that the school could not refuse to accept a religious exemption,” she related. “But then school started and the nurse called. She said the school didn’t accept religious exemptions. I told her they had to accept them so she said I would have to speak with the principal.”

R.B. reached out to Rabbi Shmuel Kamenetzky, founder and dean of the Talmudical Academy of Philadelphia, whose wife, Temi, speaks out against vaccinating children. The rabbi wrote a letter on R.B.’s behalf, leading to her son’s principal relenting and apologizing.

When reached by phone, both Kamenetzkys confirmed their belief that vaccinations, not the diseases they prevent, are harmful.

“There is a doctor in Chicago who doesn’t vaccinate any of his patients and they have no problem at all,” said the rabbi. “I see vaccinations as the problem. It’s a hoax. Even the Salk vaccine [against polio] is a hoax. It is just big business.”

Kamenetzky says he follows the lead of Israeli Rabbi Shmaryahu Yosef Chaim Kanievsky, who rules that schools “have no right to prevent unvaccinated kids from coming to school.”

“What about the people who clean and sweep in the school?” argued Kamenetzky. “They are mostly Mexican and are unvaccinated. If there was a problem, the children would already have gotten sick.”

Sharon Billing, a Baltimore nurse and mother, said she once challenged Temi Kamenetzky at a lecture.

“How can you advise young mothers to do this?” she asked the rebbetzin. “You’re old enough to remember whopping cough and diphtheria. As Jews, we are required to guard our health.”

Billing has a cousin born just prior to the development of the polio vaccine.

“He was wheelchair bound all of his life and had the use of only one arm,” she said. “I find it distressing that so many are so uninformed about vaccines.”

In her 20 years as a pediatric nurse practitioner, Stacy Schwartz of Pikesville has rarely come across parents who refuse to vaccinate. Schwartz, who works in a private practice in Cross Keys and at Beth Tfiloh Dahan Community School once a week, says she believes in vaccinating all children.

“For us, it’s a public health issue, and there is no credible research to show that vaccines lead to developmental disabilities,” said Schwartz, who added that Beth Tfiloh follows Maryland’s state vaccination policy. [...]