WARREN GOLDSTEIN: Nationwide vaccination is urgent religious obligation for all

On Monday evening Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, will be marked in Jewish communities worldwide. Our tradition teaches us it is a time of introspection. We look deeply at ourselves and resolve to be better, to do better. We search for ways to bring about positive change in the world.

Right now the best thing we can all do for ourselves and for our society is to get vaccinated. It is the most urgent moral imperative of our time. It is, in fact, nothing less than a religious obligation.

The Talmud teaches that “to save one life is to save a world” and “to destroy one life is to destroy a world”. Furthermore, in Jewish law the responsibility to preserve and protect human life overrides almost any other consideration.

Vaccination saves lives. It is that simple. The data recorded in countries across the globe is unequivocal. The results are conclusive. While providing moderate protection from mild infection, the vaccine provides extremely high protection against serious illness and death.

Countries worldwide with advanced vaccination programmes have shown us that even when infections start to rise again hospital admissions are lower by orders of magnitude relative to previous waves. 

By being vaccinated we protect life — ours and others. And that makes it a religious obligation.

Some people may question this. Are our lives not in God’s hands? Where is our faith? But having faith in God does not mean we can sit back and do nothing and expect him to take care of us. The Talmud teaches that it is expressly forbidden to rely on miracles — and that God gives doctors the mandate, and the ability, to heal. The brilliant scientists working for the bold and innovative pharmaceutical companies are doing so with gifts and insights given to them by God.

We recognise that no doctor can heal and no vaccine can protect from disease without the creator’s blessing. And when we rely on their work we are, in effect, fulfilling the will of God, who wants us to work with the laws of nature that he himself created.

There is a deeper idea here. The Talmud says humanity’s role is to be God’s “partners in creation”. We are called on to be his partners in alleviating suffering and building our world. It is an extraordinary teaching. This means doctors, nurses, virologists and immunologists — all of those involved in the holy work of healthcare — are actually working in partnership with God.

And we need to partner with each other too. We need something resembling a wartime coalition, with all sectors of society — citizens, government, businesses, religious leadership — pulling together in one unified effort to beat this pandemic. Anything less won’t be enough.

It goes beyond merely safeguarding ourselves. The Torah teaches: “Do not stand idly by the blood of your neighbour.” We have a religious obligation to protect the lives of others. We need to do whatever we can to encourage, assist and empower all those within our circle of influence to get vaccinated.

Vaccine uptake remains depressingly low, with traffic at many vaccination sites reduced to a trickle. Something has to be done, urgently. There is finally more than sufficient stock of high quality vaccines. But now is the time to ramp up the rollout.

Again — it will take a society-wide effort. The government has a sacred responsibility to educate and galvanise society, and a national awareness campaign has been under way. It needs to run vaccination sites at hospitals, schools, universities, home affairs offices and police stations, and support those without the wherewithal to register on the Electronic Vaccination Data System.

Improve efficiency

Businesses need to assist their employees and family members with on-site vaccine drives and allowances for time off. Labour unions need to find ways of helping their workers get vaccinated. Religious leaders need to transform their places of worship into pop-up vaccination sites.

I am proud to say that synagogues and Jewish communal organisations have done exactly that, reaching out to all South Africans. And a group of our young community members have set up a wonderful organisation called GiVV. Run in partnership with the Gauteng health department, it involves high school and university students volunteering at vaccination sites and government hospitals across the province to speed up the data capturing process and improve the efficiency at these sites.

So much more can be done. So much more must be done. Even as the third wave subsides people are still falling seriously ill, and dying. A fourth wave lies in wait, and a fifth and a sixth. The virus will not burn itself out, no amount of wishful thinking will make it magically disappear. Sars-CoV-2 will constantly reinvent itself, mutating into new variants, wreaking fresh havoc on our lives and our livelihoods and our health. The only way to stop it is the vaccine.

This is a pivotal time, and we must act with speed and urgency. As a country, as a society, the sooner we get our country vaccinated the more lives we save. Every immunisation is a step towards freeing ourselves of the threat of death. Like polio and numerous other diseases humanity has overcome, the only way we get past the coronavirus is to vaccinate the disease into oblivion.

​​On Rosh Hashanah we pray for many things. We pray for a good year and a sweet year — but, mostly, we pray for life itself. Throughout the service we ask God “who desires life” to “remember us for life” and “write us in the book of life”. Because we never take life for granted.

Life is the most precious of all the divine blessings we receive — a sacred gift we must do everything in our power to protect. And now that our creator has blessed our world with a life-giving vaccine — we must grab it with both hands.

• Goldstein is chief rabbi of SA. He has a PhD in human rights and constitutional law.