by Menachem Wecker in JNS
Rabbinic law operates on a principle that “a man may not make himself out to be evil,” but the Talmud also states that “silence is like agreement.” That means, two Orthodox rabbis told JNS, that it’s complicated what Jewish tradition has to say about Dr. Anthony Fauci declining to answer questions under the Fifth Amendment 111 times during a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing last week.
Fauci is a former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and chief medical adviser to former U.S. President Joe Biden, who pardoned Fauci on Jan. 19, 2025. The doctor’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic was the focus of the Senate panel hearing.
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Rabbi Yaakov Menken, executive vice president of the Coalition for Jewish Values, told JNS that he “was never as liable to believe conspiracy theories about what Dr. Fauci knew about the Wuhan Institute of Virology as I am after he refused to testify regarding the color of his tie.”
Menken, the group’s founding chief executive, noted the Talmudic statement that “a man may not make himself out to be evil.”
“That, however, refers to Jewish law exempting a person from bringing a fine, penalty or capital punishment upon himself through his own admission of guilt,” he said. “A person refusing to testify is quite different, as is the case here.”
“A person should be forthright and honest, and he made himself out to be someone with something to hide,” he told JNS.
Read the full article at JNS
Photo: C-SPAN Screenshot.