With 1.4 million infections and 85,000 deaths attributed to the novel coronavirus across the United States, it’s sometimes hard to find a success story. But here’s one: The non-profit Los Angeles Jewish Home, the largest single source provider of senior healthcare in Los Angeles, with housing for about 1,250 people and services for another 3,500,…
In Alain Cohen’s new normal, loyal customers still walk into Got Kosher? to pick up their Shabbat take-out meals, buy his famous pretzel challahs and engage in masked conversation. But Cohen must also satisfy a whole new category of customers that will only do non-contact curbside pick-up or delivery. Sometimes, he said, “They ask us…
NEW YORK (JTA) — Ira Stern was the first person in synagogue every morning and often the last to leave. After opening the arched wooden doors of the historic Bialystoker Synagogue on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, Stern would find his spot in the pews and meditate before the start of morning prayers. A welcoming figure…
Asra Nomani remembers the day in January 2002 when she stood in the driveway of her home in Karachi, Pakistan, waving goodbye to her friend and colleague Daniel Pearl as he headed out for an interview. “It was a beautiful, sunny day,” Nomani, a journalist and co-director of The Pearl Project recalled in a recent…
A leader of the fight to free Soviet Jews who has later instrumental in helping them resettle in the United States, died on May 7 due to complications of COVID-19. He was 80. Wenick spent 27 years as State Department diplomat before taking over in 1989 as the head of the National Conference for Soviet…
BUENOS AIRES (JTA) — Rafael Kugielsky, a Buenos Aires dentist who was instrumental in advancing the interests of Orthodox Jews in Argentina, died of COVID-19 on April 25. He was 90. Kugielsky established the Argentina branch of the haredi Orthodox organization Agudath Israel in 1966. He was also the first Orthodox representative to serve in…
One of the most prominent Jewish summer camps in North America is warning area rabbis that the camp faces an “existential threat” and might not stay solvent if they don’t receive a massive influx of donations. Without donations of hard cash, said Jacob Cytryn, executive director of Camp Ramah in Wisconsin, the camp would have…
New York State Attorney General Letitia James announced on Wednesday that she is looking into reports of unequal enforcement by the New York Police Department of social-distancing requirements due to coronavirus. In a May 8 letter to the police commissioner, James requested department policies and directives for enforcing the social-distancing rules, as well as the…
Catholic leaders in Bosnia and Herzegovina are planning to say what many observers see as a mass for the perpetrators of World War II atrocities against Jews, a decision that has outraged the Sarajevo Jewish community. The Bishops Conference of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Archdiocese of Vrhbosna, which oversees the Catholic faithful in the…
About 2,000 years ago, Judaism swapped animal sacrifice for prayer. This fall, it will face another challenge that, while not quite on the order of the destruction of the Second Temple, is still historic: How to conduct the faith’s holiest — and best-attended — services while maintaining enough physical distance between congregants to prevent the…
The Anti-Defamation League released its annual audit of anti-Semitic incidents on Tuesday. The watchdog group documented 2,107 anti-Semitic incidents to have taken place in 2019 – a 12% increase from the previous year and the highest number on record since the organization began tracking such incidents in 1979. Here are some of the key takeaways:…
געוויסע עקספּערטן האַלטן, אַז מע דאַרף באַטראַכטן ל״ג־בעומר ווי אַ פֿרילינגדיקן מײַ־פֿעסטיוואַל
