Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

City Closes Two More Brooklyn Orthodox Schools Amid Measles Outbreak

New York City health officials shuttered two more Orthodox Jewish schools in Brooklyn on Monday for failing to comply with an order that bans students who can’t prove they have received a measles vaccine, bringing the total number of schools closed to seven, New York 1 reported.

Health officials are taking a hard line as the measles outbreak ravaging Williamsburg, Brooklyn continues to spread. According to city officials, there have been 423 cases in the latest outbreak, 348 of them in the heavily-Jewish neighborhood of Williamsburg.

“Schools that continue to disregard our direction during the outbreak will be closed down until they can prove to the Health Department that they will comply,” Health Commissioner Oxiris Barbot said in a statement. “The reality is, the longer it takes schools and individuals to comply with our Order, the longer this outbreak will continue.”

The two newly-closed schools, Tiferes Bnos and a yeshiva, Talmud Torah D’Nitra, will not be allowed to reopen until the city approves a corrective action plan, according to health officials.

Contact Josh Nathan-Kazis at [email protected] or on Twitter, @joshnathankazis

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.