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Rabbis gave this mental health hotline special dispensation. Hundreds have called it.
A single mother, laid off because of coronavirus, asks how to manage her anxiety. A domestic violence victim wonders how to protect herself in quarantine. A father working at home seeks anger management tips. These are just a sample of calls to a recently-created hotline for Jews struggling with mental health issues during the coronavirus…
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Letter from Huntsville: ‘Our souls have been assaulted’
I am the rabbi of Huntsville’s Temple B’nai Sholom, Alabama’s oldest synagogue in continuous use. Over the first two nights of Passover, vandals defaced two congregations in Huntsville, The Etz Chayim Congregation and Chabad of Huntsville, with anti-Semitic graffiti. Although my temple was not attacked, our souls have been assaulted. As one of my congregants…
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Zoom adds new security features to stop anti-Semitic trolls
The videoconferencing company Zoom has made security changes to prevent outsiders from hijacking users’ chats, according to a webinar Thursday featuring staff from Zoom and the Anti-Defamation League, which collaborated on the update. The new development came after the ADL received more than 100 reports of “Zoombombing,” when unwelcome participants shared anti-Semitic, pornographic and racist…
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Rabbi Bruce Goldman, 84, antiwar gadfly unafraid of flouting Jewish mainstream
. (JTA) — Rabbi A. Bruce Goldman’s peak moment of notoriety came in 1968 when, as the Jewish chaplain at Columbia University, he supported campus antiwar protesters who had occupied administration buildings. Goldman lost his job at the university the following year, having assumed the post only in 1967, apparently over his role in antiwar…
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Andrea Finzi, 65, loved post-retirement life in Milan
(JTA) — People made Andrea Finzi happy, and he was used to returning the favor. Even the day of his birth was a cause for celebration. He was the first boy born to his family in years. “Everyone adored and ran to cater to your needs before you even said a word,” Marina Finzi Norsi,…
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Adam Yitz Friedman, 75, publicist and Hasidic scion
(JTA) — In another lifetime, Adam “Yitz” Friedman might have been a Hasidic rebbe rather than the Madison Avenue publicist he eventually became. Named for his grandfather, Yitzchok Friedman, the founder of the Boyan Hasidic dynasty, Friedman hailed from a line of Hasidic rebbes that included the leaders of the Ruzhin, Sadigura and Rachmastrivk dynasties….
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A San Francisco’s EMT Life on the Covid-19 Line
Three weeks ago, Aaron Jacobs, an Emergency Medical Technician with the San Francisco Fire Department, was dispatched to the Jewish Home for the Aged in San Francisco’s Mission District. “We got a call from there, it’s a huge facility,” Jacobs said, “and they wanted this patient, a woman, evaluated for Coronavirus. She’d spiked a fever…
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Evangelical field hospital in Central Park spurs debate over soul of a synagogue
A prominent Reform synagogue in Manhattan found itself on the defensive over the weekend when some congregants protested its decision to highlight the Covid-19 response efforts of an evangelical Christian organization whose politics they abhor. The group, Samaritan’s Purse, has set up a field hospital in Central Park, and Central Synagogue featured the group in…
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Stanley Chera, 78, Coronavirus Patient Who Made Pandemic Real For Trump
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Stanley Chera, the friend of Donald Trump whose coronavirus infection was an inflection point in making the virus tangible for the president, has died. News reports said that Chera died April 11. He was 78. My deepest sympathies go out to Frieda Chera and the family of the late, great, Stanley Chera,…
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Hal Willner, 64, Music Producer On ‘Saturday Night Live’
NEW YORK (JTA) — Hal Willner might have been the most willfully strange person in show business. The music producer, who died April 7 at age 64 of complications of coronavirus, had a magic touch. He could get anyone to do anything: Tom Waits to sing an unrecognizable, railroad-rough version of “Heigh Ho” from Disney’s…
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Eliyahu Bakshi-Doron, Former Chief Rabbi Of Israel, Dies Of COVID-19 At 79
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Rabbi Eliyahu Bakshi-Doron, who served as Israel’s chief Sephardic rabbi for a decade beginning in 1993, died April 12 after being admitted to the hospital for treatment of COVID-19. He was 79. “Rabbi Bakshi-Doron was a teacher for all Jewish communities in Israel and around the world,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said…
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