Opinion

• Opinion

  The ultra Orthodox leadership’s shameful abdication of its responsibility

  “Stay at home,” we were told yesterday. Other than for instances of critical need, Israelis are not to leave the house. Many of us have already been here, as schools were cancelled last week after three days of Purim vacation. For my family, that came on the heels of already having been quarantined in home…

  By Shoshanna Keats-Jaskoll

  4 min read
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  Opinion

  Panic is gripping my Orthodox community as we navigate the plague

  It’s hard to overstate how serious it was for Rabbi David Cohen, senior halachic authority in the Flatbush area of Brooklyn and nationwide, to cancel all shul-related activities due to the coronavirus outbreak. And yet, that’s what happened. On Tuesday, he sent out a letter stating that all remaining schools which had not yet closed…

  By Eliezer Brand Mar 18, 2020 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  Will we ever get to have sex again?

  If you’re reading this, I hope you’re doing well. The world is a different place from the one we found ourselves in a week ago, before the COVID-19 pandemic reached its tipping point in America, dramatically altering life as we know it for the foreseeable future. We’ve become more of our primal selves, fighting for…

  By Peter Fox Mar 17, 2020 | 3 min read

Columnists View All

• Jodi Rudoren This is my last column as editor of the Forward

  

• Jay Michaelson American Jews were played — now what?

  

• Rob Eshman There’s a shocking new report on civilian deaths in Gaza. If only it were accurate.

  

• Nora Berman Is Netflix’s new show the most Jewish cartoon ever?

  

• Dan Perry Israel’s new gift to the far right could help end the Gaza war

  

• Emily Tamkin Entering motherhood — and an obsession with the works of an Italian Jewish literary hero

  

The Latest

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  Opinion

  The coronavirus is transforming Judaism

  If you attended religious school, you’ve probably heard this story: It was the first century of the Common Era. The Romans had destroyed Jerusalem, and with it, Judean independence. In utter despair, the Jews smuggled their leader, Yochanan ben Zakkai, out of Jerusalem in a coffin. He leaped out of the coffin, and hailed the…

  By Jeffrey K. Salkin Mar 17, 2020 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  Take it from a Jewish doctor and mom: To fight corona, we have to fight our fear.

  I’m a physician, a mom, and an active member of my Jewish community. The coronavirus crisis has hit the three aspects of my identity hard. I’m worried for my patients, and concerned for my family and for my community. But in trying to meet this crisis head on from my unique vantage point, I’ve realized…

  By Yana Garger Mar 16, 2020 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  Arab-Israelis are saving Israel’s democracy, one election at a time

  This Sunday, for only the second time in Israel’s history, Arab-Israeli parliamentarians played a decisive role in providing a majority for the designated candidate for prime minister, which for now is former IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz. The gambit was historic for the very same reason its success appears so unlikely: A broad coalition…

  By Abe Silberstein Mar 16, 2020 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  What it’s like to have OCD during a pandemic

  For as long as I can remember, I’ve always felt like my body was wrong. It isn’t a feeling that I should be inhabiting a body of a different gender or size or shape — not exactly. It’s more of a feeling that my skin is a cage trapping me inside of it, and I…

  By Joel Swanson Mar 16, 2020 | 6 min read
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  Opinion

  Dating during a pandemic: How to be single in the age of corona

  I was supposed to have a first date Thursday night. I’m 32 and single and my last real relationship was a few years ago. I’ve been on an off dating apps during that time, but anyone who is single in NYC and over 30 knows that process is its own kind of absurd hell. A…

  By Mia Brett Mar 15, 2020 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  Editorial | We’re going to have to show up without showing up

  I paid a shiva call Friday morning. It was a somewhat absurd thing to do, in the hours before President Trump officially declared a national emergency, in this new era of social distancing: trek across state lines from my home in Montclair, N.J., to the Upper East Side of Manhattan. It was also the most…

  By Jodi Rudoren Mar 15, 2020 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  Community. Ritual. Joy: That’s how we survived AIDS, and how we’ll survive coronavirus

  We in the Jewish LGBTQ community are feeling some déjà vu from our worst years of trauma. Starting in 1981, the surreal became real. What had been imaginable only in the writings of Edgar Allan Poe, the annals of medieval and Renaissance history, or in the most terrifying pages of Torah, became the day-to-day reality…

  By Sharon Kleinbaum Mar 13, 2020 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  Editorial | Coronavirus is the new normal. Let’s make it Jewish.

  Our office gathered for drinks at 5 p.m. on Thursday. By “gathered,” of course, I mean we all clicked on a Google hangout link at the same time from the homes where we’d been holed up all day. I poured a little glass of Maker’s Mark; our newest employee hugged a big ceramic mug of…

  By Jodi Rudoren Mar 13, 2020 | 3 min read