Brooklyn’s biggest hospital has made concessions to the Orthodox community in its neighborhood by allowing for broader and longer use of ventilators amid the coronavirus crisis, in contrast with other New York City hospitals who might increasingly need to start deciding who gets a ventilator and who doesn’t due to the combination of more patients…
Kosher food pantries have spent months preparing for Passover, a pricey holiday during which many Jewish New Yorkers need some extra help putting food on the table. But with coronavirus taking a toll on family finances, those pantries are seeing a rapid increase in demand for their services. The Forward wrote about the challenges food…
(JTA) — As the coronavirus continues to spread, synagogues, Jewish centers and other organizations that serve as gathering places for the community around the world have closed. But even while communities cannot come together physically, some are still organizing projects to provide support to those who are suffering or at perilous risk amid the pandemic….
In a normal year, the weeks leading up to Passover are a boom time for a Hasidic handyman who specializes in installing dishwashers and stoves. His services are in high demand right before the holiday, when Orthodox families like to schedule home improvements to coincide with a rigorous cleaning. This year is different. He hasn’t…
The upside of tough times is that you learn on whom you can count, sometimes in unanticipated ways. Those who already knew Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois may have not been surprised by his decisive, compassionate leadership during the coronavirus crisis, or by his willingness to take on President Donald Trump while seeking vital supplies,…
Dr. Dara Kass loves summer camp. She was a camper and a counselor herself when she was younger. Her kids go to summer camp. She now volunteers as a camp doctor. And she co-founded a company called Camp Health Consulting, which works with summer camps to improve their health systems and is an official affiliate…
(JTA) — Randi Bergman isn’t sure of her Passover plans yet, but there’s a good chance she’ll be spending the holiday alone. Bergman, a 34-year-old freelance fashion writer, lives alone in what she calls a junior one-bedroom apartment in downtown Toronto. The setup — desk, bed, couch, TV, kitchenette but no dining table — fits…
In this time of the coronavirus and being isolated in our homes, we all need resilience. It’s a word often misunderstood. The Latin source of the word is to leap back – in other words, to return to exactly who you were before. But right now, we can’t be exactly who we were before: we…
An Orthodox funeral home in Brooklyn, where a video shows nine shrouded bodies stacked on the floor, is so overwhelmed that on Tuesday it called for volunteers with minivans and SUVs to ferry the dead to cemeteries for burial. In a message circulated via What’s App, Menachem A. Bloom, who works at the funeral home,…
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With resources strained by the COVID-19 crisis, almost a third of New York City’s food pantries have shut their doors, and more are expected to close if the state does not provide emergency funding, said leaders at the Met Council on Jewish Poverty and City Harvest, a food rescue organization that partners with many kosher…
