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How this Brooklyn neighborhood became the ‘Klezmer Shtetl’
(New York Jewish Week) — Some of the greatest talents in Jewish music have strolled Midwood’s lettered avenues, including the klezmer musician Pete Sokolow and the Hasidic composer Ben Zion Shenker. Both have left us — Sokolow in 2022, Shenker in 2016 — but the Modzitzer synagogue on Avenue L, where Shenker once lead prayers, is a spiritual home for klezmer virtuoso and Midwood denizen Andy Statman, 73. He’s davened (prayed) there for more than 30 years.
Now, a younger group of klezmer musicians joins Statman in making the quiet, south-central Brooklyn neighborhood their home, due to the (relatively) affordable rents, low density and greenery, as well as its proximity to Jewish communal life spread across the borough.
“We needed more room than Park Slope could provide on our budget,” Pete Rushefsky, who has played a hammered dulcimer known as the tsimbl in the city’s klezmer scene for more than 30 years, told the New York Jewish Week. “It’s been a great neighborhood to raise a family.” That’s especially true for a culturally active family: Rushefsky’s wife, Madeline Solomon, sings, plays accordion and runs the Brooklyn Workers Circle School in Park Slope; their 12-year-old daughter, Mathilda, plays in a children’s fiddle band in the neighborhood.
Midwood looms so large over the present-day Jewish music scene that there’s even a klezmer rock band named for it: Midwood, the band, was founded in 2015 by the fiddler Jake Shulman-Ment. The 39-year-old veteran klezmer violinist lives in the same apartment building on Ocean Avenue as Jeremiah Lockwood, a blues performer and a scholar of cantorial music.
“I call it the ‘Klezmer Shtetl,’” said Midwood’s vocalist, Eleonore Weill, who is also a multi-instrumentalist. (Weill used to reside in Midwood but now lives in next-door Ditmas Park, which is also home to Sarah Gordon, lead singer of the rock band Yiddish Princess. Nearby Kensington counts among its klezmer-making residents D. Zisl Slepovitch and the klezmer couple Ilya Shneyveys and Sarah Myerson.)
Another Midwood musician is Michael Winograd, 40, who many consider to be the best klezmer clarinetist of his generation. As a teenager, he went to Statman’s home for lessons; last summer he moved to the neighborhood.
Midwood musicians Jeremiah Lockwood, left, and Pete Rushefsky. (Courtesy)
Elsewhere in Midwood resides guitarist Yoshie Fruchter, founder of Pitom, which the Tzadik record label called “a shredding Jewish instrumental band.” Fruchter has performed with Jon Madof’s Zion80, which plays Shlomo Carlebach tunes in an Afrobeat style, and Mazal Tov Cocktail Party, the latest klezmer/dance music project led by David Krakauer and Kathleen Tagg.
“I didn’t choose Midwood, particularly,” Shulman-Ment told New York Jewish Week. “It sort of fell into my life.” The fiddler decided to rent his Midwood one-bedroom in the summer of 2021 while he was on tour in the Pacific Northwest. After seeing the place online and sending a couple of friends to check it out in person, Shulman-Ment signed a lease while he was still on the road.
As it happens, Lockwood — who lives with his two sons, ages 14 and 16, on the floor below Shulman-Ment — also rented his apartment sight unseen that same summer.
The two neighbors credit Ivona Hertz, co-owner of Ocean Empire Management, with helping them find a home. Her company manages a pair of buildings across from Prospect Park that are home to so many jazz musicians, they came to be known as “the jazz dorms.”
“When the tenants are happy they always recommend their friends,” Hertz said, describing how she came to rent Midwood apartments to so many musicians. “That’s how the ‘jazz dorms’ were created and that’s how the Midwood buildings are now getting more musicians. The apartments are larger, up to three bedrooms, including the square footage, and more affordable in Midwood.”
According to the available rentals on the real estate website StreetEasy, the median rent in Midwood is $2,566. (Hertz, the property manager known for helping musicians, says she typically charges between $1,500 and $1,750 a month for one-bedroom rentals.) The median sale price in the nabe for the first quarter of this year was $644,000, according to the real estate website PropertyShark — that’s substantially less than the Brooklyn borough-wide median of $755,000.
In addition to relatively low housing costs, Midwood is also known for being home to a very large — and mostly Orthodox — Jewish community. Traditionally Ashkenazi, the southern reaches of the neighborhood have also seen steady growth of its longtime Sephardic Jewish community. “Sephardic Jews dominate from [an area known as the] Avenue H cut to Avenue Z,” Sarina Roffe, CEO of the The Brooklyn Jewish Historical Initiative and president of the Sephardic Heritage Project, told the New York Jewish Week. “The Sephardic community in Brooklyn has been growing for more than 100 years.”
Most of these newer, klezmer residents identify as secular Jews, and not Orthodox. But many of them said they enjoy living among their Orthodox brethren. Clarinetist Winograd lives in part of Midwood that’s “very Jewish,” as he described it. “I kind of like being a secular Jew who gets to experience the benefit of a quiet Shabbes. I enjoy being a culturally-engaged Jew living in a Jewish neighborhood even if I’m not partaking in the more religious activities.”
Shulman-Ment — who identifies as a secular Jew who is committed to Jewish culture — spent a year living in Crown Heights, so he was familiar with the feeling of living in an Orthodox neighborhood and feeling like a bit of an outsider. He said he’s noticed, though, that if he’s in his “gig costume” — a suit and fedora — some of his Orthodox co-religionists offer a friendly greeting.
Lockwood described his (and Shulman-Ment’s) section of Midwood, along Ocean Avenue, as “rough-hewn and unlovely. It is a hard-working and threadbare place.” And yet, “I like it here fine,” he told the New York Jewish Week, adding: “I just don’t want to encourage out-of-towners to move in.”
Fruchter — who moved to Midwood last December with his wife, Jewish cookbook author Leah Koenig, and their two kids, aged 4 and 9 — said his area of Midwood has a lot of Pakistani residents, but on Saturday his family can often hear zemiros, hymns sung at the Sabbath table, coming from the homes of Orthodox neighbors down the block. “I really like how you see people from so many different places, cultures, religions and backgrounds all sharing the same sidewalks,” Fruchter told the New York Jewish Week via email. “I love walking by businesses with signs in different languages and restaurants where I have no idea what to order… I love that it’s a ‘quiet’ neighborhood but with a lot of bustle in it.”
Klezmer virtuoso Andy Statman, left, has lived in the neighborhood more than 30 years, while guitarist Yoshie Fruchter, right, is a more recent resident. (Courtesy)
The family is involved in the Flatbush Jewish Center, a Conservative egalitarian synagogue in the neighboring Kensington section of Brooklyn where Fruchter has served as cantor on the High Holy Days and organized a concert series.
Fruchter is also a member of Shulman-Ment’s band Midwood — whose recording of their live performance at the “Klezmer On Ice” festival in Minneapolis last winter will be released in the coming months. Midwood the band’s next gig is at the National Yiddish Book Center’s annual Yidstock festival in Amherst, Massachusetts on July 16.
Shulman-Ment will also be performing with the actor and musician Daniel Kahn on June 15 at the East Village world music venue Drom. The performance is timed to the release of the duo’s first album, “The Building & Other Songs,” which features Yiddish versions of songs by Leonard Cohen, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Waits and Woody Guthrie.
The other Midwood klezmer musicians with gigs to look forward to are Rushefsky — who is also the executive director of the Center for Traditional Music and Dance — and Statman, who will both be playing with the violinist Itzhak Perlman in the coming months.
In addition, Statman plays in two trios: The Andy Statman Trio, which has performed at the Greenwich Village Synagogue in Manhattan regularly for 20 years, and another with the Eddy Brothers, two young West Virginia bluegrass musicians. More recently, Statman started playing with a traditional bluegrass quartet that’s comprised of players he’s known since he was a teenager. That band is now known as Andy’s Ramble, not to be confused with the 1994 Statman album of the same name.
Statman grew up in Queens and was in his mid-20s when he first moved to Brooklyn in 1976. After a series of apartments, he and his wife Basha moved to Avenue L in Midwood in 1987, where they raised their four children. “Our kids needed to be here. We needed to be here,” Statman said. “There is sky and trees and grass here. There are birds chirping all over. The neighborhood was incredibly vibrant.”
When he first arrived, Statman took a break from his music career for a year to study Jewish holy texts full time. In the 35 years since, he’s seen real estate values soar to a level he calls “ridiculous.” Statman said that since the early 2000s, he’s watched kids who grew up on his block move to Lakewood, New Jersey or Monsey in Rockland County — both home to sizable Orthodox Jewish communities — because they couldn’t afford to buy homes in Midwood. Now their parents are leaving, he added, because they want to be near their grandchildren.
It’s a fate the clarinetist is personally familiar with: None of his four children, now grown, live in the area. With two daughters and their grandchildren living near Lakewood, the Statmans are considering relocating there themselves.
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The post How this Brooklyn neighborhood became the ‘Klezmer Shtetl’ appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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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.
The post Germany takes a step back to its Nazi past — and Donald Trump is cheering them on appeared first on The Forward.
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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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