
Ari Feldman is a staff writer at the Forward. He covers Jewish religious organizations, synagogue life, anti-Semitism and the Orthodox world. If you have any tips, you can email him at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @aefeldman.
Ari Feldman is a staff writer at the Forward. He covers Jewish religious organizations, synagogue life, anti-Semitism and the Orthodox world. If you have any tips, you can email him at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @aefeldman.
Editor’s Note: Due to inaccurate information provided by Ezra Friedlander, a Hasidic leader, a prior version of this article incorrectly reported that Rabbi Aharon Teitelbaum of the Satmar dynasty had tested positive for the novel coronavirus. After publication, Friedlander said Teitelbaum’s grandson had told him the rabbi had not yet received results of his coronavirus…
Hana Cohen’s apartment in Borough Park has a view onto the heavily Orthodox neighborhood’s 12th Avenue thoroughfare. There is a yeshiva, a daycare, a small synagogue, a restaurant. Tuesday, it was business as usual, with class in session and people shopping. Wednesday was different. “Usually there’s kids playing by the street, there’s mothers on the…
At least 100 people have tested positive for coronavirus in Brooklyn’s Hasidic Borough Park neighborhood, amid intense debates within and around such communities over continued gatherings for prayer, study and celebrations like weddings. The news of the outbreak was first reported by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, which cited an official at Asisa, an urgent-care clinic…
On Sunday, the participants of Nativ had a choice: stay in Israel, or go home. Yossi Garr, the director for 15 years of this beloved gap-year program in Israel, told the 53 participants and their parents that despite growing restrictions on public life and movement in and out of Israel, Nativ could continue. They could…
On Wednesday evening last week, Dr. Stuart Ditchek convened an unprecedented meeting. At a synagogue in Midwood, Brooklyn, he gathered 170 rabbis, yeshiva principals and administrators (some streaming in via Zoom) to ask them to make a difficult, but necessary, decision: close their doors immediately to help stop the spread of coronavirus. Ditchek, a pediatrician…
The Jewish world is going online as schools, synagogues and Jewish community centers close down across the country in an effort to slow the spread of coronavirus. To keep Jewish learning and life alive for the next several months, clergy and educators are using what already exists on the internet or coming up with new…
BBYO, the international, pluralistic Jewish youth organization, is launching a streaming and on-demand video content center for Jewish teens to help Jewish institutions move their youth programming to the internet as schools, camps, sports events and other gatherings are cancelled and postponed due to coronavirus. The service, called BBYO On Demand, launched Friday, and already…
The Yeshiva University basketball team did everything possible to protect themselves. After a second-round victory in the NCAA Division III tournament Saturday night — the best result in school history — the team decamped to Long Island rather than returning to the Manhattan campus, which had been partially shut down because a student tested positive…
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