Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of the robust lives of American Jews. Here there’s a little of everything about the multifaceted world of Jewish life. There are light-hearted Jewish celebrity stories and shocking Jewish celebrity news. Food is also plentiful,…
Life
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Isolated in Rockland County, worried about Williamsburg: A quarantine diary
Mrs. Hersh, a matriarch of a large clan in the Satmar Hasidic community of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, usually approaches the Passover Seder with a royal touch. Every year, in the month before Passover, Hersh makes a trip to the Bergdorf Goodman’s department store in Manhattan and buys herself an evening gown. She sets the Seder table…
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How I plan to survive a three day yontef with kids and no screentime
I think my neighbor put it best. “Look,” he texted my husband earlier this week, “I’m at the point where, if my son takes out his tablet on Shabbos afternoon and starts watching a Christmas show, I’m just going to go with it. I need a break.” When my husband shared the thought with me,…
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Five virtual seders for an unprecedented Passover
So you didn’t organize a virtual seder to bring together friends and family across the country. You were too busy adapting to your new role as full-time home-schooler to brainstorm thoughtful discussion questions about the relationship between our current predicament and the Passover story. You didn’t cobble together a quirky haggadah because the only thing…
The Latest
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I can lead the seder. I just need someone to teach the 90-year-olds Zoom.
Of course we’re going to have a seder. Our parents, grandparents, and great grandparents all had seders despite world wars and pogroms. A pandemic won’t stop us. Because we have Zoom. We’re all Zooming, right? Zoom work meetings. Zoom cocktails with friends. Zoom gym sessions. Zoom meditation. Our family favorite is our new tradition of…
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There are heroes all around us — meet three of them
We see them on social media and in family group chats. We hear about them when we call our friends or talk with a neighbor across the street. They’re churning out homemade masks on their sewing machines or babysitting the children of emergency responders. They’re delivering groceries to neighbors or risking infection to keep soup…
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Zoom Seders are far from ideal, says this psychologist. But here’s how to make the best of it.
In a dramatic ruling this month, Orthodox rabbis in Israel permitted families separated by Covid-19 to join each other for Seder via streaming video. This overturned two centuries of Orthodox practice, which prohibits use of electrical appliances on Sabbath and Festivals. The rabbis invoked the principle of piquah nefesh – saving life. They feared that…
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Beards and face masks: Boro Park prepares for Passover
A year ago, I profiled Avi Kaye, an Orthodox street photographer who mostly works in Boro Park and Williamsburg, and who posts his photographs on an Instagram account, ‘Hasidim in USA.’. As COVID-19 hit the Orthodox community, I noticed that Kaye was posting photographs of Orthodox Jews wearing face masks on Instagram — he was…
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Do you know someone acting heroically during this pandemic? Tell us their story.
Health-care workers risking infection every day. Volunteers supporting organizations that care for the most vulnerable. Clergy getting creative about how to counsel the grieving, the ill, the lonely. That neighbor who is organizing virtual playdates for the whole block, picking up extra ingredients at the store, or otherwise making this crisis a little more livable….
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Feeling Jewish peoplehood in the time of corona
My mother teaches a classroom of 2-year-olds at a Jewish day school in Houston, Tex. Ever since the novel coronavirus hit and school turned virtual, she’s been sending YouTube videos to her yeladim. One YouTube followed “Morah Sandy’s” Shabbat cooking preparations. “I wish y’all had smellovision!” she said, showing off her golden challahs. This reminded…
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COVID-19 and Orthodox life: The pitfalls and privileges of community living
Five months ago, I visited New York City’s Lander College for Women, an Orthodox women’s college, eager to discuss my research with the next generation of undergraduate political science majors. My alma mater greeted me with open arms and we gathered in a classroom for a discussion on how cities can produce successful social outcomes….
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Video: A very quarantined Four Questions
To help get you in the mood for your virtual Seders, the Forward has created a video with a very special reading of the Four Questions. In “A Very Different Night,”actors from television, film and Broadway, two comics and one dog puppet with an excellent Hebrew accent join to recite the traditional Four Question liturgy…
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