JERUSALEM (JTA) — Some Orthodox rabbis in Israel have approved the use of a video conference program such as Zoom to bring families together for a Passover seder. The letter in Hebrew issued on Wednesday was signed by 14 rabbis, all Sephardic. According to the rabbis, the video conference must be operating before the start…
(JTA) — Besides the coronavirus epidemic, Israel has another crisis on its hands. It’s inside the government and only tangentially related to COVID-19. Here’s the short version: After Israel’s latest election earlier this month — its third in a year — Benny Gantz and his center-left coalition seem closer than ever to garnering enough support…
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…
As President Donald Trump faces mounting pressure to use the Defense Production Act to make private industry manufacture supplies like masks for healthcare workers and ventilators for patients, one voice has risen above the rest in a call for action against coronavirus: Hillel the Elder. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo took to Twitter Tuesday to…
Two New York City rabbis have died, both diagnosed with coronavirus. Rabbi Romi Cohn of Staten Island, a 92-year-old and Holocaust survivor who had fought as a partisan in World War II, succumbed to the disease, the website The Yeshiva World reported. Cohn was also a mohel who performed thousands of circumcisions free of charge…
(JTA) — Why will this Passover be different from all others? This year, the London Beth Din, or religious court, has created a list of permissible products not made under special supervision for Passover due to difficulties caused by the coronavirus crisis. The Kashrut Division of the court developed the list, titled “Product guidelines in…
(JTA) — Andre Touboul, a rabbi affiliated with the Chabad-Lubavitch movement who led one of France’s most prestigious high schools, has died of the coronavirus in Paris. He was 64. Touboul led Beth Hanna, a Jewish institution of some 1,500 students whose high school was ranked the best in France in 2015 by Le Parisien…
A Hasidic man was refused service at a Toyota dealership in New York Monday after being accused of “spreading the virus.” In several videos and voice notes shared on WhatsApp, the man described making an appointment at Johnstons Toyota, in New Hampton, N.Y., and then being asked to leave without having his car serviced, even…
Despite rumors swirling online to the contrary, Israel has not developed and tested a vaccine for coronavirus. The rumor appears to have started with a Facebook post that read, “A vaccine for CoronaVirus has just been approved in Israel. It is being produced in hundreds of thousands as we speak and expected to be in…
(JTA) — The last surviving German recognized as a righteous gentile for saving Jews during the Holocaust died on Monday. Gertrud Steinl, who was recognized by Yad Vashem in 1979 as a Righteous Among the Nations, died a day before her 98th birthday. Steinl’s death was confirmed to the German news agency dpa by Andre Freund,…
JERUSALEM (JTA) — More than half of a group of 114 students who returned to Israel from a yeshiva near the Chabad world headquarters in New York have tested positive for coronavirus. The Hasidic students returned after the headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn was closed for the first…
100% of profits support our journalism
