Just prior to Yom Kippur, Director of the National Institutes of Health Dr. Francis Collins sat for a Zoom interview with Rabbi Naomi Levy about God and the pandemic. Dr. Collins, a devout Christian, leads the United States’ search for treatments and a vaccine for COVID-19. Rabbi Levy is the founder and spiritual leader of…
This article is adapted from The Branch, a monthly podcast exploring individual relationships between Jews and Arabs, Israelis and Palestinians. The Branch is produced by Hadassah and created by Dina Kraft, a journalist based in Tel Aviv. Sign up here to listen to episodes and be notified when new episodes are published. When Gila Zarbiv…
Orthodox Jewish doctors are triggering a debate about safety and freedom as they sound increasingly loud alarms about the need for more caution heading into the holiest day of the Jewish year, Yom Kippur, citing an increase in COVID-19 cases in their communities. “Do we all have such a short collective memory of what happened…
The crush is in full swing in Northern California, which in the age of COVID-19 means one thing for the congregants of Congregation Beth Israel: time to leave the parking lot. For months beginning last spring, about 20 men and women from the region’s largest Orthodox synagogue would arrive at the large parking lot of…
Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s rabbi spoke on Friday at the Capitol building as the body of Supreme Court justice, feminist icon and Jew arrived for the high honor of lying in state for two days. She spoke about a framed piece of art in Justice Ginsburg’s chambers that said tzedek, tzedek tirdof, “Justice, justice you must…
This article is adapted from The Branch, a monthly podcast exploring individual relationships between Jews and Arabs, Israelis and Palestinians. The Branch is produced by Hadassah and created by Dina Kraft, a journalist based in Tel Aviv. Sign up here to listen to episodes and be notified when new episodes are published. Umm al-Fahm, Israel….
Mishkan, a congregation in Chicago, registered 2,500 guests for Rosh Hashanah services, compared to 1,900 last year. At B’nai Jeshurun in New York, a slate of virtual Rosh Hashanah offerings drew about 10,000 users, three times the number of members and guests the synagogue hosts in a typical year. Although it’s too soon to say…
Some Haredi yeshiva day schools in Brooklyn and the New York and New Jersey suburbs are discouraging COVID-19 testing for both teachers and students to try to avoid school closures despite an uptick in cases in Haredi communities broadly. At Bais Yaakov of Borough Park, for example, administrators called teachers individually and asked them to…
This article is adapted from The Branch, a monthly podcast exploring individual relationships between Jews and Arabs, Israelis and Palestinians. The Branch is produced by Hadassah and created by Dina Kraft, a journalist based in Tel Aviv. Sign up here to listen to episodes and be notified when new episodes are published. As Ali Ottman,…
It’s clear that an already conservative-leaning Supreme Court will lean even more conservative once the Senate approves President Donald Trump’s nominee to fill the seat occupied by Ruth Bader Ginsberg, who died last week. On the face of it, conservatives will hold a 6-3 majority in major cases, a far stronger position than their previous…
Something remarkable, maybe even historic, happened when Palestinian terrorist Leila Khaled appeared live via YouTube — the site knocked her off. Just 22 minutes into a long-planned Sept. 23 seminar featuring Khaled, the transmission abruptly stopped and a message appeared against a black screen: “This video is unavailable.” Those four words capped an intense, weeks-long…
