Virtue, Vaccination, and the Disease of Coercion
How Rabbi Avraham Steinberg's call to punish the unvaccinated reveals a totalitarian impulse long feared by political philosophers
In the tumultuous years of the COVID-19 pandemic, a seismic shift occurred in our public discourse. The language of health, once focused on personal well-being and medical guidance, morphed into a vocabulary of moral obligation, social utility, and, ultimately, coercion. A stark line was drawn in the sand, not between the sick and the healthy, but between the compliant and the defiant.
This chasm was given a chilling voice by figures like Rabbi Avraham Steinberg, an influential medical ethicist, who, in the pages of Arutz Sheva, declared it permissible to force vaccine refusers “to be vaccinated against their will or to punish them for their refusal.” He went further, comparing the intentionally unvaccinated to “rodfim” (pursuers) who should be judged in a “criminal” light.
Continue reading on Jewish Home News by Mordechai Sones
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Listen: Debate on Vaccine Coercion – Necessary Safety or Totalitarian Impulse?
Distilling the core philosophical battle exposed by public health measures, centering on controversial calls for vaccine coercion
Introducing: Jewish Home News harnesses artificial intelligence to distill the core philosophical battle exposed by public health measures, centering on controversial calls for vaccine coercion.
Listen on Jewish Home News at https://jewishhome.news/listen-debate-on-vaccine-coercion-necessary-safety-or-totalitarian-impulse/
3 comments:
I’m shocked: we are in far more perilous times when such a person ....
Rabbi Professor Avraham Steinberg serves as Director of the Medical Ethics Unit & Chairman, IRB Committee, and is Senior Child Neurologist at Shaare Zedek Hospital; Chief Editor of the 27 volume Head of the Talmudic Encyclopedia, and author of the Encyclopedia of Jewish Medical Ethics. He is an Israel Prize laureate.
Just like the “other international Prize” (that Trump keeps vying for) the Israel Prize has just lost its entire value.
Neshama, how right you are. This rabbi seems to be politcally motivated and not Torah motivated. How can a rabbi (who should know better) promote 'coercion', something so diametrically opposed by our Torah. Aside from this basic understanding of what freedom for the individual means; the facts after all the millions of people who passed away and others who were maimed by this plague and its ''treife trufah' (just five years ago) proving the harm that it caused but there are still those who are living in the dark or maybe the truth is that the world has become so corrupt, where we can therefore now, without any doubt, see the wisdom of our Torah Sages of 2000 years ago who prophecized about erev rav rabbis and rulers at the end of days. May Hashem Protect our people from all troubles and bring to every
true Jew a blessed year of good health, shleimut HaAretz & the coming
of Moshiach tzdkeinu, peace on earth, and the knowledge of Hashem. Amen!
chelm
Amain!
I follow only Hashem!!
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