This is the Forward’s coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic and its affect on Jewish communities around the world.
COVID-19
The Latest
-
Opinion The plague’s reminder: We only think we’re in charge
BG IMG LINK Previous Article Next Article As COVID-19 is not the fearsome Yersinia pestis bacterium — the rod-shaped, anaerobic organism that ravages human bodies by way of rat fleas — it is not, strictly speaking, a plague. No matter. If civilization can be said to be plagued by froyo shops or LED light displays,…
-
Opinion My great-grandmother survived Stalin and Hitler. I’m thinking of her this Passover.
BG IMG LINK Previous Article Next Article We’re going to be alone for the seders. It was the first thought in my mind that really hit home the severity of the COVID-19 crisis as New York authorities began telling people to stay home. The next one was: Are we even going to be able to…
-
Opinion Coronavirus is exposing the plagues of American society
BG IMG LINK Previous Article Next Article If God sent coronavirus to our shores, it isn’t because he’s punishing us. He’s simply forcing us to look into a mirror so we can finally take a good hard look at who we really are rather than what we’ve long pretended. Or maybe it’s because he was…
-
Opinion I used to love the plagues – until I lived through one
BG IMG LINK Previous Article Next Article I used to love the plagues. Not anymore. I used to love the plagues until I lived through them. As a child, my most favorite moment of Passover, the otherwise endless family dinner which featured a gelatinous fish dish and an overcooked meat dish, was the plagues. After…
-
Opinion Being alone, choosing life: Jewish practice in a plague
Our tradition is predicated on the notion that no Jew should live alone on a desert island
-
Opinion In times of senseless tragedy, God manifests through us
BG IMG LINK Previous Article Next Article The situation is devastating. An entire country, the most powerful one of its time, brought to its knees, its vast military and economic might no match for the plague that envelops it. It must have been utterly crushing to be an Egyptian back then. And yet, horrible as…
-
Opinion The Seder is a passport to the past and the future
BG IMG LINK Previous Article Next Article In her book, “Illness as Metaphor,” Susan Sontag bans us from using metaphor to describe disease. We need to toughen up, she thinks, and forgo the flight away from the thing itself, the marauding crimes wreaked on the body by maladies too many to count. As Sontag writes,…
-
Opinion From plagues to Promised Land: Let’s build a world of solidarity
BG IMG LINK Previous Article Next Article I remember a conversation with my son, who is 12 and studying for a Bar Mitzvah that is now in a holding pattern. Last year, at Passover, he told me he didn’t think it was fair that in order to free the slaves regular Egyptians had to suffer…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
Fast Forward Mississippi fire suspect called the temple a ‘synagogue of Satan’
- 2
News Synagogue arson suspect posted satirical antisemitic cartoon on day of the attack
- 3
News The ADL’s turn away from civil rights was years in the making — Oct. 7 accelerated it
- 4
Culture He works at a Holocaust museum by day. How’d he end up in ‘Marty Supreme’?
In Case You Missed It
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
