Becky Lustgarten is due to give birth to her first child, a boy, at the end of April. Pre-pandemic, she and her husband, Taylor, felt committed to following the Jewish mandate for circumcision on the baby’s eighth day of life, though she admitted being “a little not-so-thrilled” anticipating the painful procedure. Now the couple, who…
Dealing with the coronavirus pandemic has been challenging on so many levels: the constant fear of invisible infection; long days cooped up in our apartment with two of our sons; and the persistent absence of our third, Nadav, who died three years ago at the age of five. Born with a serious congenital heart defect,…
Emboldened by overtures from the White House, Dr. Vladimir Zelenko, the Hasidic doctor pushing an unproven treatment for coronavirus, on Friday stepped up his campaign to build support for the controversial regimen, with a YouTube video and an email blast to conservative media and political figures touting his results. “CONCLUSION — TREAT AS EARLY AND…
On Thursday afternoon, Thryn Hare drove to a Minneapolis house where a cluster of seder plates was lying in the yard. They were a mismatched bunch — some engraved with flowery Hebrew letters, some sleek and modern, one patterned to look like matzah — but all would enliven a Passover table, and all were free…
Cindy Goldberg, a school board president, was waiting for a virtual meeting to begin on Zoom Tuesday night when hackers started posting cartoon images of Hitler, photos of Nazi soldiers and swastikas to parents, board members and other staff for the school district sandwiched between Los Angeles and Santa Barbara. “Awful doesn’t begin to touch…
It’s not every Shabbat that the governor of a state gives the sermon at a local synagogue. It’s even more unusual when he’s speaking to a near-empty sanctuary. But that’s what happened last Friday night, March 20 at Temple Emanuel in Newton, Mass., one of the myriad ways Shabbat is changing in the coronavirus era….
I just moved to New York City at the beginning of this year, and was just beginning to get my feet under me, to choose a neighborhood coffee shop, when everything shut down. Each new friend I’d made has now fled the city to ride out the pandemic with family or partners, wanting to be…
The controversial coronavirus drug that a Hasidic doctor has been using to treat hundreds of people with moderate symptoms in upstate N.Y. is also being tried by doctors in at least three other states, and New York health officials have started using it to treat critically ill patients in hospitals. The expansion in the use…
Shoshana Davis, who worked in marketing, was passionate about travel — on a budget. On her Instagram account, @wanderlustonashoestring, she described hers as “a family of adventure junkies making the best of vacation days, weekends, and airline miles.” Shoshana died on March 23, at age 35, after falling ill to Covid-19. She lived in Park…
Bryan Leib got the dreaded call last week. His employer, the Jewish nonprofit Americans Against Antisemitism, was laying him off due to uncertainty caused by coronavirus. “We’re not a large nonprofit, and we found ourselves having to make tough decisions,” said Leib. “The last thing people are thinking about, I think, is giving to a…
Rabbi Charles Rudansky is a hospice chaplain who serves dying patients and their families. He also conducts funerals. Coronavirus is shaping the experience of all of his patients, and all of their families — both before they die, and afterwards — even though not one of them has died of coronavirus yet. May their memories…
