
Irene Katz Connelly is a staff writer at the Forward. You can contact her at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter at @katz_conn.
Irene Katz Connelly is a staff writer at the Forward. You can contact her at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter at @katz_conn.
In our new era of social distancing, most people are focusing on what they can’t do. In New York and other cities, it’s now impossible to have dinner out or grab coffee with a coworker. You can’t get your nails done or see a film. But there’s one pastime that is proceeding without interruption: online…
On Thursday afternoon, Thryn Hare drove to a Minneapolis house where a cluster of seder plates was lying in the yard. They were a mismatched bunch — some engraved with flowery Hebrew letters, some sleek and modern, one patterned to look like matzah — but all would enliven a Passover table, and all were free…
Who she was: Edith Stein Where and when: Germany, 1891-1942 Who she worshipped: Although Stein was born into an Orthodox German Jewish family, she converted to Catholicism as a young woman and became a Carmelite nun. In the Catholic world, she soon became a significant intellectual voice, translating the works of Thomas Aquinas and writing…
Who she was: Miriam Spira-Luria Where and when: 15th-century Padua What we know: If Miriam Spira-Luria were alive today, she’d be a public intellectual and a prominent voice on Jewish Twitter. But in a cloistered religious community controlled by men, she could never even get a seat at the table. Spira-Luria was born in Germany…
Speaking to Nine News Sydney, an Australian television channel, 93-year-old Holocaust survivor Olga Horak urged citizens not to panic about the novel coronavirus, telling them to stay calm and be kind to each other instead. Like America, Australia has seen streets emptied by social distancing, empty supermarket shelves, and escalating cases of coronavirus in the…
This is my evening routine in the era of coronavirus: around dinner time, I descend the staircase that connects my childhood bedroom, where I’ve spent most of the day, to the kitchen below. From the bottom, I can just see the table where my parents are preparing to sit down. But I eat on the…
“World War Z” author Max Brooks makes a living selling stories of the zombie apocalypse. But today, he’s enlisting his followers to help stave off the apocalypse at hand. On Twitter, the writer teamed up with his father, the veteran comedian and director Mel Brooks, to demonstrate proper social distancing techniques in the confusing era…
Following the lead of cities in Italy, France, and Spain, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced on Sunday that in an effort to slow the spread of coronavirus, New York will limit restaurants to takeout and delivery starting on March 17. “Social distancing,” the practice of limiting contact with others in order to…
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