Opinion

• Opinion

  Coronavirus is no excuse to demonize Haredim

  In the endless stream of stories about the COVID-19 pandemic, an unsettling sub-plot has been the actions, or lack thereof, of various Haredi groups in the New York metropolitan area. Reports of a swarm of positive test results in Borough Park and Williamsburg have raised fears of a cluster outbreak, triggered by a small number…

  By David N. Myers

  4 min read
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  Opinion

  ‘We rehearse for this all the time’: Holocaust survivors face coronavirus with grit and humor

  For Cordula Hahn, a Holocaust survivor in Brooklyn, the first trigger was the lack of toilet paper. “Oh, no, will I have to go back using newspaper?” she asks, half chuckling. “That’s what we did when we were in hiding in the Netherlands, and seeing the panic over toilet paper immediately brought back that memory.”…

  By Marisa Fox-Bevilacqua Mar 20, 2020 | 6 min read
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  Opinion

  Why American Jews are at greater risk for coronavirus

  More than 100 people tested positive for COVID-19 in Brooklyn’s ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods Borough Park and Williamsburg in what is New York City’s first cluster of novel coronavirus cases. But while the COVID-19 virus may appear to be a problem most pressing for more religious, geographically clustered groups of Jews, this pandemic is actually an existential…

  By Samuel J. Abrams Mar 20, 2020 | 3 min read

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The Latest

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  Opinion

  I’m an Orthodox man forced by coronavirus to pray at home. Will you join me?

  Like most people with relatively normal lives, I enjoy being at home. My wife is there (at least when she’s not working), my bed is there, my chair, a well-stocked pantry, a kitchen that the missus sometimes lets me take over, a few adorable grandkids and their likewise adorable parents a few blocks away. But,…

  Mar 19, 2020 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  Coronavirus’s lesson about the deep connection between the physical and spiritual

  COVID-19 is the very worst kind of news. On a warpath from Wuhan, it has inflicted enormous human suffering, savaged the global economy, and ripped apart the very fabric of daily life. COVID combines the tools of the assassin’s trade — stealth, silence, ease of movement — with the worst of the terrorist’s capacity to…

  By Ari Hoffman Mar 18, 2020 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  How not to talk about coronavirus in the Orthodox community

  Tuesday was the COVID-19 tipping point for New York’s Hasidic communities. Rumors began circulating that morning that in Boro Park, at one clinic alone, there were hundreds of new positive test results, marking an extreme jump in cases of the virus. While it later turned out that rumor was overblown, it was true that well…

  By Eli Steinberg Mar 18, 2020 | 4 min read
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  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 Mar 18, 2020 | 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
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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 Rabbi 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