In 2014 Bruers and Breckman addressed a series of subsidiary questions arising from the trolley problem and their answers. In this article I describe ancient and precedent treatments of some of these issues over thousands of years as found in Jewish literature and the original solutions that have been proposed throughout history by Jewish philosophers and legal scholars. I address questions that have been posed to Jewish halakhic authorities when two obligations clash — whether one may save the lives of (...) many at the cost of killing an individual — and discuss whether this is permitted in order to save lives or forbidden owing to the prohibition of murder. I also present new problems that have been introduced into the halakhic and philosophical discussions around the trolley problem in Jewish literature. (shrink)

In recent years, more and more religious communities have been refusing to vaccinate their children, and in so doing are allowing diseases to spread. These communities justify resistance to vaccination on various religious grounds and make common cause with nonreligious communities who oppose vaccination for their own reasons. Today this situation is reflected primarily in the spread of measles, and vaccine hesitancy was identified by the World Health Organization as 1 of the top 10 global health threats of 2019. The (...) present article presents the religious and ethical arguments for the obligation within Jewish tradition to vaccinate all children. Apart from the obligation on parents to vaccinate their own children, it includes the ethical arguments based on Judaism that call for parents to become organized and force schools to refuse to accept children who have not been vaccinated and demand vaccination of those who have not been inoculated. (shrink)