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Dramatic stories of survival, endurance and escape reign as Ukrainian Jews mark 1 year of war
(JTA) — Most of the passengers on the flight from Chisinua, Moldova, to Tel Aviv earlier this month were subdued.
Some had just witnessed scene after scene of hardship on a tour of war-torn Ukraine organized by the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. Others, about 90 in all, were Ukrainians in the process of moving permanently to Israel, talking in hushed tones about being on a plane for the first time, their uncertain future and the loved ones they left behind.
Alexei Shkurat was not subdued.
Bespectacled and bearded, he was standing in his seat, making wisecracks that caused the elderly woman in the seat next to him to guffaw despite herself.
“I like joking and communicating. It’s my life, why waste it being nervous?” Shkurat told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in English.
“And anyway, I’m happy, happy, happy I will soon see my sons again,” he added.
Switching to Russian, Shkurat’s brow furrowed and his voice lowered when he recounted how, on Feb. 28, 2022, he had risked his life to transport his sons, 14 and 12, to the border with Poland with their mother and grandmother. From there they would move to Israel.
Shkurat could not go with them. The borders were closed for military-aged men, so Shkurat was forced to drive back to his hometown of Odessa. What happened next, as he recounts it, was harrowing: As he passed an empty field near Lviv, he encountered two Ukrainian soldiers, their AK-74 rifles trained on him. Shkurat raised his hands and was told to step out of his vehicle. He knew that if he made one false move, he would be shot.
The soldiers searched the car and interrogated him, asking him why he was traveling alone after curfew and even asking if he was a Russian spy. Shkurat later learned that 40 Russian paratroopers had recently landed in the area and had stolen ambulances and police cars. He answered the soldiers in Russian, which only raised their suspicions. Ukrainian is the dominant language in western Ukraine, but as a Jew from Odessa, Shkurat’s native tongue is Russian.
“I was terrified. I know that they were only doing their job, but the situation was so scary. Everything I ever knew in life had changed,” he said.
Catch up on all of JTA’s coverage of the Ukraine War here.
By a considerable stroke of luck, Shkurat, a street artist, was able to prove his identity by showing the soldiers his Instagram page, filled with posts of his art in locations all over Odessa.
But according to Shkurat, the story was far from over. The next chapter of his life was far more hair-raising, he said. Pressed on the details, Shkurat grinned and switched back to English.
“I can’t tell you a thing,” he said. “I want to sell the story to Netflix.”
Whatever cinematic experience Shkurat might have had, his fellow passengers surely had made-for-the-movies stories of their own. They had made it through nearly a year of war before deciding to move to Israel, making them the latest of 5,000 new immigrants from Ukraine facilitated by the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, working in collaboration with Israeli government entities such as Nativ and the Ministry of Aliyah and Integration. Approximately 15,000 Ukrainians in total have immigrated, or made aliyah, in the last year.
Ukrainian Jewish refugees who fled the war in their country wait on a bus upon arrival at Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv, on an airlift of medically needy passengers made possible by the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, Dec. 22, 2022. (Gil Cohen-Magen/AFP via Getty Images)
According to the group’s vice president, Gidi Schmerling, if there is any upside to the war from Israel’s perspective, it’s that many middle-class Ukrainians — doctors, engineers and high-tech employees — who wouldn’t have otherwise made aliyah are now choosing to do so.
But IFCJ’s mandate also includes the Jews who stayed behind. Since Russian tanks first rumbled across the border a year ago, the group has raised more than $30 million dollars — primarily from evangelical Christians from North America and Korea — for the main Jewish organizations in Ukraine including the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, or JDC, and Chabad. (Both groups do extensive fundraising of their own.) This week, the anniversary of Russia’s invasion, it announced another $4 million in planned spending.
In Odessa, more than 7,000 people currently receive aid from IFJC via local Jewish groups. The Jewish community, once 50,000 strong, now stands at 20,000, according to the city’s chief rabbi, Avraham Wolff. Seven thousand food packages are distributed every month in Chabad centers. Many of the beneficiaries are older — among them some 187 Holocaust survivors — but not all. Several hundred are people who were displaced from surrounding cities, such as Mykolaiv, which was hit much harder by Russian shells, and some are the so-called new poor, those for whom the war has plunged into poverty from loss of income and rising inflation.
Ala Yakov Livne, an 86-year-old widow, is one of many who lined up recently to receive a box with oil, flour and other basic necessities. For Livne, the part that stings most about the last year is the sense of betrayal.
“[The Russians] were our neighbors. Many of them were our friends,” she said.
“Times have changed but some things never change,” Livne went on. “Back then, we were under occupation under the Nazis, back then, they tried to kill us, and now again, we are under occupation and they are trying to destroy us.”
Yelena Kuklova survived the Holocaust by being hidden by non-Jewish neighbors. “We started our lives in war and we’re finishing them in war,” she said. (Deborah Danan)
It was a refrain that would be repeated several times over the ensuing days. In a trembling voice, 85-year-old Holocaust survivor Yelena Kuklova, who as a child was hidden by her non-Jewish neighbors in a suitcase in a closet, echoed the sentiment.
“They killed us then because we were Jews. They are killing us today because we are Ukrainian,” she said, a slow cascade of tears spilling over her cheekbones. “We started our lives in war and we’re finishing them in war.”
And so it was in battle-scarred Mykolaiv, 140 kilometers northeast of Odessa. “What the Germans never managed to do, the Russians did,” said Eli Ben Mendel Hopstein, standing in front of his building, pockmarked from the shrapnel of a Russian missile.
Inside his home, Hopstein rifled through decades-old photos of himself in the navy. “I know danger,” he said, “and I don’t feel it now.” He describes himself as a proud Jew. “First, I am a Jew, then I am Ukrainian, and I never once hid this from anyone.”
Mykolaiv, pro-Russia before the war and now a vanguard of the south, has become a source of pride for its residents because of Russia’s failure to occupy it. Even before the war, Mykolaiv was a desperately poor city. But now, following eight months of daily explosions, destruction is everywhere and the city’s critical infrastructure has been badly damaged.
Damaged buildings are a common sight in Mykolaiv, which Russian troops pummeled during the first year of the war. So are people lining up for potable water. (Deborah Danan)
Like Odessa, the city has no electricity for up to 22 hours a day. For more than half a year, large swaths of the city had no water at all. Today, residents can turn on the tap and get a murky brown liquid known as technical water, but it is far from potable. For drinking and cooking, they are forced to collect safe water in plastic gallon bottles at water stations all over the city, many of which were installed by the Israeli nonprofit IsraAID.
Scenes of people placing buckets outside their houses in the hope of catching rainwater became ubiquitous in Mykolaiv. For its Jewish contingent, Chabad provides truckloads of bottled water. Hopstein credits the IFCJ and Chabad for keeping him alive.
“If it wasn’t for their help, I would have nothing,” he said.
Across the road from Hopstein, 82-year-old Galina Petrovna Mironenko, who is not Jewish, is not so lucky. A Russian S300 missile that appeared to be targeting a nearby university missed its mark and struck Mironenko’s home, decimating her every earthly possession. Mironenko said the only help she gets is a weekly loaf of bread from the government. Standing in her charred kitchen, her red and blue checkered headscarf offering the only color, Mironenko’s expression is almost childlike — a jarring contrast to the words she utters.
Galina Petrovna Mironenko stands in the wreckage of her home in Mykolaiv, destroyed by a Russian missile. Her Jewish neighbor credits aid from Jewish organizations for keeping him alive. (Deborah Danan)
“I have died three times in my life,” she said. “Once when my father died, again when my son died and a third time after the 20 minutes it took for my house to burn.”
Back in Odessa, the sun has set and the city is cloaked in darkness, a cue that soon it will be time to head indoors for the nightly curfew. But first, a visit to the Orlikovsky family who are packing their suitcases ahead of their emigration the next day. On the couch in the tiny living room sit four generations of Jews: Alina; her daughter, Marina; her grandson Andrey; and Andrey’s wife and daughter Viktoria and Sofiya.
Andrey recalls Feb. 24, 2022. “I couldn’t believe my eyes and ears. I heard a terrible blast and grabbed my daughter and told my wife, ‘Let’s get out!’ I thought my house was going to collapse like a doll’s house.”
Participants of the Hanukkah celebration in Kharkiv, northeastern Ukraine, received a hot meal — part of the sustained aid that Jewish communities have distributed throughout the war there, Dec. 18, 2022. (Vyacheslav Madiyevskyi / Ukrinform/Future Publishing via Getty Images)
But it would take nearly a year to finally make the move, because of Viktoria’s late mother who was sick and because, in Andrey’s words, “you get used to the bombs.”
“We live without power, we live without heating, very often there is no hot water. We are living like insects,” Alina said. “My children told me, mama, we need to go.”
When the family finished speaking, the electricity came back and the lights turned on. Sofiya, 5 years old, laughed into her mother’s chest.
The first anniversary of the war marks two weeks since Alexei Shkurat and the other 89 new arrivals were greeted on the tarmac of Ben Gurion Airport by Israel’s new immigration minister, Ofir Sofer. Shkurat is on the lookout for a permanent home in a place where he can sell his art.
“I am getting to know the country and looking for new friends,” he said. “I want to do a lot of beautiful and bright projects. I want to draw a lot,” he said.
He deeply misses Odessa, which he called an amazing city, but being reunited with his sons has soothed the pain.
“Meeting with my children was the best event of the last year,” he said.
—
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Germany takes a step back to its Nazi past — and Donald Trump is cheering them on
What a role reversal.
Since the start of his second term as president, Donald Trump has looked like he’s been following the playbook of Adolf Hitler and other despots. But now Germany is becoming like Trump’s America.
The Sunday election results in Saxony-Anhalt state were a victory not just for the Alternative for Germany, known as the AfD, but also for Trumpism. As Trump’s powers are cracking in the US because of high prices and the unpopular war against Iran, the American president’s brand has not only taken root in Germany’s former communist region, but is threatening to spread across the country.
“Wow! The Populist Party in Germany just had a really big night,” Trump wrote Tuesday on Truth Social. “They finally got tired of the absolutely horrible Immigration rules and regulations which have hurt Germany so badly.”
“MGGA!!!,” Trump wrote at the end of his post, apparently meaning “Make Germany Great Again.”
MAGA’s influence is plain to see on social media videos posted in the run-up to the Saxony-Anhalt election, in which the AfD came alarmingly close to winning enough votes to form a government on its own, which would have been the first time since the Nazi era that an extreme-right party has taken over the leadership of a German state. The videos show AfD followers saying racist things about immigrants and the superiority of white people, that there’s too much emphasis on the Nazi years and German history needs to be told more positively, and calling for an end to funding “anti-German art,” whatever that might mean, among a host of other stands that mirror those of MAGA.
Sally Lisa Starken, a freelance German journalist and bestselling author who has been chronicling the AfD, posted an Instagram video of an AfD “family festival” in Magdeburg, the capital of Saxony-Anhalt.
“The whole time I felt like I was at a Trump event. The AfD has quite consciously learned from the MAGA movement,” said Starken, who has also covered Trump rallies in the US.
AfD merchandise was everywhere, including t-shirts bearing the photo of Ulrich Siegmund, the AfD’s lead candidate in the Saxony-Anhalt election, and the man who would become leader of the state if the party is able to find a partner willing to join in a coalition government.
As is the case with Trump, there’s a cult of personality surrounding the 35-year-old Siegmund. People at the family festival stood in line for two hours to have their picture taken with him. Just before the Saxony-Anhalt election, the cover of the newsmagazine Der Spiegel called him “the most dangerous man in Germany.” Taking a page from Trump, Siegmund used the cover’s mug shot-style photo in his election campaign.
As with Trump, people of all shapes, sizes, ages and backgrounds attend these AfD gatherings, but they’re probably even whiter than at Trump’s rallies. And like Trump, Siegmund sounds like a huckster who knows how to grab the attention of people who feel like they’ve been left behind.
The AfD has become especially strong in former Communist East Germany at least partly due to German reunification, which occurred in 1990. The economy in the eastern region has never caught up with that of the wealthier west, unemployment is high, wages are comparatively low. There’s a feeling among many in eastern Germany that reunification hurt them, rather than helped them.
Reunification also triggered an explosion of neo-Nazi violence against foreigners, a scourge that continues to the present day. Resentment against foreigners soared in 2015, when then-Chancellor Angela Merkel opened Germany’s borders to waves of refugees fleeing war-torn Syria, a fateful decision that lifted the AfD from a fringe group of extremists to a party to be reckoned with — at first just in the eastern states like Saxony-Anhalt, but now across the country.
In last year’s federal elections, the AfD doubled its share of seats in the Bundestag, the German parliament. As a growing number of Germans have felt ignored by the mainstream parties — the Christian Democrats, the Social Democrats, the Greens and the Left — the AfD has surged ahead to become Germany’s largest opposition party.
Among those who attend AfD rallies are diehard neo-Nazis, many sporting tattoos with symbols and slogans banned by law because of their association with the Third Reich. Instagram videos from party gatherings show AfD followers saying that Hitler was a great man and Germany could use another leader like him, and only people with pure German blood deserve to be citizens.
Last year, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, classified the AfD as right-wing extremist.
“The ethnicity- and ancestry-based understanding of the people prevailing within the party is incompatible with the free democratic order,” the agency said in a statement at that time.
That judgment didn’t stop the AfD from seeking legitimacy abroad — or from finding it. Close links between the Trump administration and the AfD go back to the start of Trump’s second term.
It started with JD Vance’s address in February 2025 to the Munich Security Conference, an annual meeting of American government officials with our purported European allies. Vance shocked the conference by coming to the defense of extremist parties like the AfD. Since the defeat of the Nazis, Germany’s mainstream political parties have maintained a “firewall” that keeps them from cooperating with extremist parties. In his speech to the security conference, Vance essentially accused Germany’s mainstream parties of authoritarian behavior by shutting out the AfD.
“If you’re running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you,” Vance told the European leaders.
On that same trip, Vance added insult to injury by meeting with the head of the AfD, Alice Weidel.
Olaf Scholz, who was chancellor at that time, defended the firewall against the AfD, saying the party trivializes Nazi atrocities. He basically told Vance to mind his own business.
“Where our democracy goes from here is for us to decide,” Scholz said.
At the center of the fraternal relationship between the AfD and MAGA is Elon Musk, the man who insists the stiff-arm gesture he gave at a rally celebrating Trump’s second inauguration was not the Hitler salute, although it sure looked like it. Just a few days later, Musk made a virtual appearance before a gathering of 4,000 at an AfD campaign rally in Halle.
“I think you really are the best hope for Germany,” Musk told the AfD followers. “It’s good to be proud of German culture and German values, and not to lose that in some sort of multiculturalism that dilutes everything.”
Musk added that there is “frankly too much of a focus on past guilt and we need to move beyond that.”
After the AfD’s success in the Saxony-Anhalt election, Musk wrote on X: “Well done!”
The AfD’s election shocker in Saxony-Anhalt has certainly caught the world’s attention — something that probably would not have happened were it not for Germany’s Nazi past.
Nonetheless, it feels like we have lost sight of a very important fact.
As we worry about the prospects of right-wing extremists increasing their power in Germany, politicians with virtually the same ideologies — xenophobes, white supremacists, racists and bigots — are already in the halls of power or positions of influence in Washington, D.C. and elsewhere in America.
And there’s something positive to be said about Germany.
Unlike the Trump administration, Germany investigates, prosecutes, and sends to prison far-right would-be insurrectionists, instead of freeing and rewarding them.
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For Orthodox women, or those who find men in yoga studios ‘gross,’ a refuge in Brooklyn
It’s Friday morning in Hasidic Crown Heights, just two blocks away from the Chabad-Lubavitch World Headquarters, and we are doing cat-cows. In cat pose, I hunch my back and pull my chin to my chest, letting gravity pull my ponytail to the ground. In cow, I pull my shoulders back, look up, and scan the room. For some, this class at Vessel Studios is a final meditative moment before a hectic day of shopping, cooking, and otherwise preparing for Shabbat. But as I look around, it’s impossible to tell which of my fellow cows is Orthodox and which is not. Save for the headscarves that some of the Hasidic women are wearing, heathens and believers alike are dressed in more or less matching uniforms of leggings and sports bras.
Ordinarily, this class would be taught by the owner of the studio, Riki Rosenthal, but she is extremely pregnant and has thus joined as a participant rather than a teacher. A Crown Heights native, Rosenthal grew up Hasidic and took her first yoga class when she was 19, an age where wearing leggings at the Crunch Gym in Prospect Heights without a skirt on top still felt like a rebellious act. Now, she identifies as a “non-frum Lubavitcher” — a phrase that captures the dual reality that she no longer conforms to an Orthodox lifestyle, but still identifies strongly with the culture in which she grew up.
“Chabad supersedes being religious in a way; it’s a culture that I will always connect to,” she said. Aside from a stint in Manhattan in her 20s, she has never lived anywhere other than Crown Heights. By founding a yoga studio that caters to women only, she has created a space where students, regardless of their religious beliefs or lack thereof, can exercise without the influence of men, whether for tznius, for the sisterly environment, or simply because, like Rosenthal, they believe “yoga studios with men are gross.”
In September 2020, 12 years after she took off her skirt to work out at Crunch, at a time when many studios were still closed because of COVID, Rosenthal started teaching yoga in her apartment. Two years later, she opened Vessel in the basement of a townhouse on Eastern Parkway. Signing a lease for her own studio was a big move, she said, but “there’s this part of being Chabad that makes you feel invincible.”
The studio has a soothing, sage green aesthetic, small lamps placed around the room provide soft lighting, and instructors often burn incense. There’s even a drawer with extra tichels — headscarves — in case anyone forgot theirs (though recently it had been emptied in anticipation of heavy rain and possible flooding, and hadn’t been restocked when I visited).
Rosenthal sometimes hears from would-be yoginis wanting to know if yoga is “kosher.” She feels unqualified to answer that question, especially since she “doesn’t totally subscribe to kosher.” Still, what she teaches is an Americanized brand of yoga that goes light on the Sanskrit, so that students don’t feel like they’re committing the sin of worshipping a false idol. “None of my teachers really talk about any of the yogic deities,” she said. “I try to keep it very neutral because I don’t really want to piss anyone off.”
Still, here on Eastern Parkway, as our Friday morning class comes to a gentle close, our instructor, Rachel Sherman, ends it with a “namaste” along with a “Shabbat shalom.”
For Sherman, who grew up Reform in Dallas, teaching yoga at Vessel has challenged the stereotype of Hasidic women — at least, Lubavitcher women — as quiet and demure. “A lot of my students speak, like, five languages. Most of them have careers,” she said. She admires what she views as their extreme confidence: “Total beginners will come to yoga and go straight to the front row,” she said. “No one’s afraid to tell me if they hate the incense, or if they need the temperature of the room different, and as someone who leans a little more people-pleasy, I appreciate a straight shooter.” She said she’s also impressed by how quickly women start doing yoga again after giving birth.
Maia Levy, a member of the Crown Heights Lubavitch community, was a near-total beginner when she started coming to Vessel. She said she wasn’t intimidated, though; she understood quickly that Vessel was the kind of place where “everyone is at their own pace” and “if you need to be in child’s pose for, like, 20 minutes, that’s fine.”
Earlier this year, Levy gave birth to her first child. She attended prenatal yoga at Vessel while pregnant, and returned to class a mere six weeks after giving birth. Sure, she might spend a little more time in child’s pose than before, but in a women’s-only yoga studio in a community that puts a heavy emphasis on motherhood, no one bats an eye. “I was, like, itching to get back,” she said.
The post For Orthodox women, or those who find men in yoga studios ‘gross,’ a refuge in Brooklyn appeared first on The Forward.
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The measles outbreak and the skepticism about vaccines
אַ פּאַציִענט מײַנער אין מײַן קליניק האָט מיר געװיזן אַ בילד פֿון אַ פּלימעניק מיט אַ מאָדנעם אױסשיט. „קען דאָס זײַן מאָזלען?“ האָט ער געפֿרעגט, אומבאַרויִקט. מיט פֿינף יאָר צוריק, מיט צװײ יאָר צוריק, װאָלט איך אים געזאָגט אַז דאָס איז שיִער נישט אוממעגלעך. הײַנט אָבער לײענט מען קאָשמאַרן װעגן קינדער װאָס שטאַרבן אַװעק פֿון אַ קראַנקײט װאָס האָט פֿריִער געהאַלטן בײַם עלימינירט װערן. װאָס איז געשען?
אין די שפּעטע 1950ער און פֿריִע 1960ער יאָרן, זײַנען צװײ מאָל אַזױ פֿיל קינדער געשטאָרבן פֿון מאָזלען װי פֿון פּאָליאָ. די ערשטע פּראָבע פֿון אַ מאָזלען־װאַקצין האָט מען אַדורכגעפֿירט אין 1960. אַז מע קוקט אױף דער דאָזיקער טאַבעלע, אונטן, זעט מען אַז די צאָל פֿאַלן זײַנען היפּש אַראָפּגעפֿאַלן בײַם אַדאָפּטירן דעם װאַקצין. (מע קען אױך פֿאַרגלײַכן מיט בריטאַניע, װוּ דעם װאַקצין האָט מען אײַנגעפֿירט מיט אַ 20 יאָר שפּעטער, און די צאָל פֿאַלן איז געבליבן מער װײניקער אַ הױכע ביז דעמאָלט, אין פֿאַרגלײַך מיט די פֿש״אַ.)
הײַנט זעט מען װידער מאָזלען: נישט נאָר די בולטסטע סימנים דערפֿון — דעם אױסשיט װאָס הײבט זיך אָן אױפֿן קאָפּ און גײט װײַטער אַראָפּ, ביז די פֿיס, אָדער די בלױלעכע פּינטעלעך אױף דער אינעװײניקסטער הױט פֿון מױל — נאָר אױך די סכּנות װאָס זײַנען גאַנץ רעאַל כאָטש קומען פֿאָר װײניקער, מוח־אינפֿעקציעס און טױט. אין 2023 זײַנען געװען 58 פֿאַלן מאָזלען אין די פֿאַראײניקטע שטאַטן; אין 2024 — 285; אין 2025 — 2,289, און אין 2026, ביזן 27סטן אױגוסט — 2,903 פֿאַלן.
אין 2025 זײַנען דרײַ קינדער אין אַמעריקע געשטאָרבן פֿון מאָזלען, און ביז איצט אין 2026 זײַנען צוויי קינדער געשטאָרבן, כאָטש די טראָמפּ־אַדמיניסטראַציע, בײַנאַנד מיט דער דירעקטאָרין פֿון פֿעדעראַלן סי־די־סי, עריקאַ שוואַרץ, האָבן אָפּגעמעקט יענעם ציפֿער פֿון פֿעדעראַלן װעבזײַטל.
די סיבות פֿאַר װאָס מע װאָלט געװאָלט באַהאַלטן יענעם ציפֿער דעקן זיך מיט די סיבות פֿאַרן נעגאַטיװן צוגאַנג צו װאַקצינען װאָס הערשט אין דער איצטיקער רעגירונג. װאָס אַן אמת, כאָטש מע האָט ליב צו באַשולדיקן דעם פּרעזידענט אין אַנטי־װאַקציניזם, איז אַזאַ צוגאַנג אױך אַ סך מער פֿאַרשפּרײט אין אַנדערע לענדער. אױך אין קאַנאַדע שטײַגט די צאָל פֿאַלן מאָזלען און דעם אַנטי־װאַקציניזם שטיצט מען מער אין דער עפֿנטלעכקײט. הײסט עס אַז טראָמפּ, און דער נעגאַטיװער צוגאַנג פֿונעם געזונט־סעקרעטאַר ראָבערט קענעדי לגבי װאַקצינען, זײַנען נאָר סימפּטאָמען פֿון אַ ברײטערער גלאָבאַלער טענדענץ.
בכלל װילן אַ סך הײַנטיקע רעגירונג־פֿירער איבער דער װעלט אײַנצױמען די מאַכט און דעם גרײך פֿון דער מלוכה. זײער טענה גײט אין דעם, אַז די מלוכה מישט זיך כּלומרשט צו פֿיל אַרײַן אינעם לעבן פֿון מענטשן. דאָס איז געקניפּט און געבונדן מיט אַן אַזוי־גערופֿענעם פּאָפּוליזם. אַזעלכע אָנפֿירערס װילן שטיצן „דאָס פֿאָלק“ קעגן „דער עליטע.“
צום באַדױערן רעכנט „די עליטע“ אַרײַן מענטשן װאָס זײַנען יאָ מומחים אין געװיסע געביטן װאָס דאַרפֿן יאָ אַ ספּעציאַליזירטן צוגאַנג. און „דאָס פֿאָלק“ װאָס די דאָזיקע אָנפֿירערס שטיצן איז אָפֿט מאָל נאָר דער טײל פֿאָלק װאָס שטיצט יענע פֿירערס. (מע זעט נישט קײן איניציאַטיװן פֿון די דאָזיקע אַנטי־װאַקצין־רעגירונגען צו שטיצן אַנדערע אַספּעקטן פֿון עפֿנטלעכן געזונט. פֿאַרקערט, די קאַמפּאַניע לטובֿת געזינטערע שפּײַזן פֿון קענעדי איז מערסטנס אַן אופֿן צו באַשלדיקן יחידים אין זײערע דיִעטעטישע טעותן.)
די דאָזיקע אידעאָלאָגיִעס העלפֿן דערקלערן פֿאַר װאָס „פּאָפּוליסטישע“ אָנפֿירערס אין אַ צאָל לענדער טרעטן אַרױס קעגן דאָקטױרים, קעגן פֿאָלקסגעזונט, קעגן װאַקצינען, נאָר פֿון דער אַנדערער זײַט, ניצן זיי יאָ די מאַכט פֿון דער מלוכה זיך אַלײן צו באַרײַכערן און באַשיצן.
די דאָזיקע טענדענצן שפּיגלען זיך אױך אָפּ אין די מײנונגען נישט בלויז פֿון די פֿירערס, נאָר אױך פֿון סתּם מענטשן פֿון אַ גאַנץ יאָר. יעדע װאָך זע איך אַ סך פּאַציענטן אין מײַנע קליניקן אין באַלטימאָר װאָס זײַנען סקעפּטיש לגבי װאַקצינען אָדער זײַנען אַקטיװ דערקעגן.
פֿאַר װאָס װיל מען זיך נישט װאַקצינירן? װעגן דעם האָט מען אַדורכגעפֿירט אַ צאָל שטודיעס, נאָר אױף אײן פֿוס איז װיכטיק צו דערקענען אַז דאָס נישט װאַקצינירן זיך מײנט נישט אַז מע װיל נישט. דאָס לעבן איז קאָמפּליצירט, אַ סך פֿאָדערונגען קאָנקורירן איינע מיט דער צווייטער, און אױב מע דאַרף פֿאָרן צום דאָקטער, אין אַ געװיסער שעה, און צאָלן אַפֿילו בלױז אַ פּאָר דאָלער, קען דאָס אױך זײַן אַ מניעה. (שטעל זיך פֿאָר אױב מע האָט קלײנע קינדער אױך, אָדער עס פֿעלט אַ טראַנספּאָרט־מיטל, אָדער די ריכטיקע שפּראַך.) מיט אײן װאָרט, מענטשן טוען וואָס ס׳איז זיי גרינגער.
אָבער עס זײַנען אױך דאָ מענטשן װאָס זײַנען נישט זיכער אַזױ צי אַזױ װעגן װאַקצינען, זײ פֿילן זיך אין אַ קאָנפֿליקט. מע האָט נישט קײן צוטרױ צו דער רעגירונג, מע האָט מורא פֿאַר די בײַ־עפֿעקטן (װאָס עקזיסטירן יאָ), מע האָט זיך אינאָפֿרמירט מיט פֿאַלשע ידיעות.
אַ בײַשפּיל װאָס קער אינטערעסירן די פֿאָרווערטס־לײענערס איז אַנשי שלומנו, די חסידישע קהילות אַרום דער װעלט, װוּ װאַקצין־סקעפּטיציזם איז אױך אַן ענין. כאָטש מע זאַמלט נישט קײן דאַטן אין די אַמעריקאַנער צענזוסן באַזירט אױף רעליגיע, קען מען זען, למשל, פֿון די מאַפּעס בײַם ניו־יאָרקער געזונט־דעפּאַרטמענט, אַז אין די געגנטן װיליאַמסבורג און באָראָ־פּאַרק, למשל, איז דער פּראָצענט װאַקצינירטקײט װײניקער.
די סיבות פֿאַר װאָס טײל חסידים זײַנען נישט איבערצײַגט צו װאַקצינען זײערע קינדער זײַנען ענלעך אױף סיבות פֿון אַנדערע אַזעלכע איבער דער װעלט: אַ שטײַגנדיקן אומצוטרױ צו דער רעגירונג אין אַ תּקופֿה פֿון עקאָנאָמישער און געזעלשאַפֿטלעכער אומזיכערקײט.
װען עס רעדט זיך וועגן געזונט־באַשלוסן, פֿאָלגט מען אָפֿט מאָל נישט די עצה פֿונעם דאָקטער, נאָר גיכער וואָס עס זאָגט אַ קרובֿ אָדער אַ גוטער־פֿרײַנד. אױב עס מאַכט זיך אַ שװעריקײט אָדער אַן אומבאַקװעמלעכקײט אַרום װאַקצינען, קען געמאָלט זײַן, אַז מע װעט נאָכמאַכן די מענטשן װאָס מע קען פּערזענלעך און מיט װעלכע מע פֿאַרברענגט אַ סך צײַט.
מעדיצינישער עטיקערס הײבן אַרױס די װיכטיקײט פֿון „פֿרײַען אױסקלײַב“ װעגן געזונט־באַשלוסן, נאָר אַ סך פֿירעכצן װאָס זײַנען אָנגענומען אין אונדזערע געזעלשאַפֿטן און קהילות זײַנען נישט גוט דורכגעטראַכט — אַרײַנגערעכנט פֿירעכצן װאָס שטיצן דעם עפֿנטלעכן געזונט. דאָס טראָגן שיץ־פּאַסן, למשל, אָדער דאָס פֿאָרן פּאַמעלעכער ווי די מאַקסימאַלע גיכקײט, אָדער דאָס נישט רײכערן אין עפֿנטלעכע ערטער, דאָס פֿאַרזיכערן געזונטע שפּײַזן און װאַסער־קאַנאַליזאַציע — דאָס אַלץ זײַנען דערגרײכונגען פֿון פֿאָלקס־געזונט װאָס זײַנען באַזירט אױפֿן מבֿינות פֿון רעגירונג־עקספּערטן, נישט יחידישע באַשלוסן װאָס מע דאַרף װידער נעמען יעדן טאָג פֿון דאָס נײַ.
ווען מע לעבט אין אַ געזעלשאַפֿט דאַרף מען, פֿאַרשטייט זיך, אָננעמען געװיסע אַחריותן לטובֿת דעם כּלל. װען איך װאָלט געדאַרפֿט איבערצײַגן אַלע מײַנע פּאַציענטן אײנציקװײַז װעגן װאַקצינען װאָלט געװען אוממעגלעך צו דערגרײכן די באַשיצונג װאָס מע דאַרף פֿאַר דער גאַנצער באַפֿעלקערונג. לאָמיר האָפֿן אַז דעם עפֿנטלעכן געזונט, באַזירט אױף װיסנשאַפֿטלעכע פֿאַקטן, װעט אונדזער געזעלשאַפֿטלעך װײַטער שטיצן.
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