Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic and its affect on Jewish communities around the world.
COVID-19
The Latest
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Fast Forward Jewish summer camps are already preparing for coronavirus
(JTA) — As swine flu swept through the United States in the late spring of 2009, Jewish summer camps took some drastic measures. One set up a quarantined area where some 45 infected kids and counselors lived apart from the rest of the camp. Another took every camper’s temperature twice a day and sent children…
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Fast Forward Jared Kushner relative solicits coronavirus tips for him on Facebook
(JTA) — A physician with family ties to senior White House adviser Jared Kushner said he solicited advice on Facebook for Kushner on how to deal with the coronavirus. Kurt Kloss, whose daughter is married to Kushner’s brother, on Wednesday asked a group of fellow emergency room physicians on the social network for the advice…
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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…
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News The loneliest Shabbat: Bracing for another holy day in quarantine
Vera Koppel, 84-year old Holocaust survivor and resident of New Rochelle, is something of a local community organizer. She was born in Budapest, moved to the United States after the 1956 Hungarian revolution, and today is an active member of the Young Israel of New Rochelle, where she runs the “Ruach” weekly group for senior…
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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…
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News Shabbat services go virtual as governors across U.S. ban large gatherings
Synagogues across the country have taken steps to limit Shabbat services and other religious events after governors of three of the states with the largest Jewish populations announced bans on large gatherings. View an updated list of streaming services here. In New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo declared a ban on gatherings of 500 or more…
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Life With the corona virus afoot, don’t be foolishly pious.
Judaism has never been a tradition that privileges meticulous religious devotion over self-care and personal health. In a famous Mishna, Rabbi Joshua states that a “foolish man of piety”, or hasid shoteh, causes the world to be destroyed. While the Talmud gives the specific definition of a man who refuses to save a drowning woman…
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Fast Forward Rabbis cancel Shabbat, Jewish life in Teaneck to help stop coronavirus
Rabbis in Bergen County, N.J. have canceled Shabbat, and communal life altogether, in order to help public health officials slow the spread of coronavirus, according to a statement released Thursday. They have ordered that their community stay home with their immediate families, forbidding any gatherings larger than that. From services in synagogues, to classes in…
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Culture Hitler is trending on TikTok again — and they’re trying to make him seem like a nice guy
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Fast Forward Sitcom star encourages non-Jews like her to hang mezuzahs on their homes
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Opinion A maelstrom around Rashida Tlaib shows how broken discourse about the war has become
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Fast Forward Israel’s Third Lebanon War is underway. Here’s what you need to know.
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Fast Forward For Jewish communities in areas battered by Helene, High Holidays take a backseat to basic safety
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News The Forward’s $1,000 flak jacket: The tale of an Israeli talisman
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Opinion A year after Oct. 7, Israel’s south is still discovering new depths of resilience
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