Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Natan Sharansky gives quarantined youngsters tips for surviving solitary

Students at SAR High School and SAR Academy, private Jewish day schools in New York, are under home quarantine and learning remotely after at least 29 people associated with the school were diagnosed with coronavirus. In order to help the students cope with being unable to leave their homes, the schools brought in a virtual guest speaker to offer them advice about their very particular predicament: Natan Sharansky, the Soviet Jewish activist who spent nine years in prison, half of it in solitary confinement.


As a public service during this pandemic, the Forward is providing free, unlimited access to all coronavirus articles. If you’d like to support our independent Jewish journalism, click here to make a donation.


Here’s what Sharanksky had to say Thursday, according to Shlomo Zuckier, an academic who listened in on the talk:

Sharansky himself has also been affected by the coronavirus, though not because of his health: A talk scheduled Sunday at the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia with Sharansky and the State Department’s Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating anti-Semitism, Elan Carr, was turned into an online event.

Aiden Pink is the deputy news editor of the Forward. Contact him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter @aidenpink

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

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.