This is 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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News NYC medical chief apologizes to the Orthodox community for mishandling outreach during the pandemic
Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration has learned from past mistakes and is seeking to improve outreach efforts to the Orthodox community in Brooklyn, two senior city officials said in a conference call with Jewish media representatives on Tuesday. The acknowledgment — as the city is looking to rebuild trust in the COVID-19 vaccination drive —…
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Opinion ‘Save a single life, save an entire world:’ Faith leaders must stop fighting COVID restrictions
After a year marked by loss — of loved ones, community, a sense of normalcy — it takes no stretch of the imagination to understand why people of faith across the country yearn to return to houses of worship. I am among them. A Zoom call can never replace the experience of being in the…
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News 90-year-old Jewish woman walked six miles in snow to get vaccine
Earlier this month, when 90-year-old Fran Goldman walked six miles through the snow to get her vaccine, she didn’t think much of it. “I’m not an attention grabber,” Goldman, a member of Seattle’s Temple Beth Am, said in an interview this weekend. “I did not think it was a big deal.” But her story was…
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News After a year of the pandemic, the dual meaning of masks this Purim
Purim has often been dubbed the “Jewish Halloween.” For Jeremy Sarnat, last year’s holiday was particularly scary. Friends in his Atlanta neighborhood were delivering the traditional festive food baskets and he was afraid to open them. It was in the very early days of the pandemic when epidemiologists were still honing in on how the…
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News Jewish college students volunteer to help local seniors register for vaccine
Jonathan Kempner, a 69-year-old Maryland resident, hasn’t seen his daughter in nearly a year. The day he became eligible for a vaccine — Jan. 25 — he sat at his computer, ready to click on all eight possible registration links the moment the clock struck 12:01 a.m. None worked. Early that morning (“I’m not a…
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News In Ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods, confusion abounds over a lack of vaccine priority
When New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio released a list of 33 neighborhoods that would be prioritized for COVID-19 vaccine appointments and sites, Brooklyn’s main Orthodox neighborhoods were not on it, prompting renewed accusations that he has treated those communities unfairly in regard to the pandemic. Borough Park, Williamsburg and Crown Heights – neighborhoods…
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News Dr. Rochelle Walensky, new head of CDC, got her start at Jewish summer camp
Dr. Kenneth Freedberg was standing at his wife’s bedside in a Boston hospital’s intensive care unit when an unexpected visitor entered: Dr. Rochelle Walensky. “We were there for no more than 45 minutes when Rochelle walks in,” said Freedberg, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. “She didn’t work there,” he said, recalling his…
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Culture They remember their last big vaccine — for polio
My father isn’t one to proffer childhood anecdotes, but there is one story he likes to tell: it’s about his polio vaccine. He was in elementary school when the Sabin vaccine (named for Alfred Sabin, the Jewish scientist who developed it) became available for general use. He lived in a small Connecticut town where crowds…
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News Jews paused Indiana’s abortion ban — by turning a religious freedom law against the evangelical right
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Culture In 1989, Harold Pinter and Jerry Schatzberg made the perfect Holocaust movie for 2026
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Opinion An abominable new Israeli law is a death warrant for democracy
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Culture Inside the ancient Christian theology driving modern antisemitism
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Culture Two women race to save Persian Jewish music before it fades
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Opinion Passover liberation and US liberty both summon us to remember and renew
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Culture 70 years ago, this Jewish choreographer predicted our epidemic of loneliness and isolation
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Culture Gene Shalit, a mensch with a personality as big as his mustache, turns 100
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