Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic and its affect on Jewish communities around the world.
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Fast Forward BBYO launches Jewish ‘Netflix’ for live-streamed teen programming
BBYO, the international, pluralistic Jewish youth organization, is launching a streaming and on-demand video content center for Jewish teens to help Jewish institutions move their youth programming to the internet as schools, camps, sports events and other gatherings are cancelled and postponed due to coronavirus. The service, called BBYO On Demand, launched Friday, and already…
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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 ‘Rabbi rebellion’: 33 Orthodox rabbis endorse Harris
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Opinion I was a Bernie supporter. This year, I’m voting Trump. Here’s why liberal Jews like me made the switch
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Opinion Here’s why Orthodox Jews are loyal to Trump — even if they don’t love him
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FIRST PERSON As a rabbi, he helped others mourn. So why wouldn’t his daughter say kaddish for him?
In Case You Missed It
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Fast Forward Pro-Trump PACs back more misleading ads about Harris and Israel in final bid for swing-state voters
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Fast Forward Thirsty Philly voters were in for a surprise: Paul Rudd and some handy hydration
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Opinion Netanyahu’s firing of Gallant is a cynical betrayal of Israel’s security
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Fast Forward They quit the Biden administration over the war in Gaza. But they are backing Harris.
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