'Trusted Messengers, Trusted Messages': How To Overcome Vaccine Hesitancy at 2:00 am NPR The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services booked an unusual guest interviewer for one of its public health events this fall: Shulem Lemmer, the first Hasidic singer to sign with a major record label. Lemmer has no particular expertise in public health, but he grew up in Brooklyn, home to many ultraorthodox Jews like himself. He's seen as a trusted messenger in parts of the Hasidic community that, despite suffering a disproportionate number of hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19, have on some occasions resisted New York's pandemic restrictions.