Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic and its affect on Jewish communities around the world.
COVID-19
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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 Ultra-Orthodox anti-vaxxers blame coronavirus shot for Rabbi Twerski’s death
In some corners of Ultra-Orthodox or Haredi social media, the beloved rabbi and psychiatrist Abraham Twerski died not of coronavirus, but of a man-made menace even worse than the virus itself: The COVID-19 vaccine. “The rabbi Dr, was perfectly healthy” wrote a commenter on an article announcing Twerski’s death on the Haredi news site Yeshiva…
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News In Israel, some Netanyahu detractors are refusing vaccinations
TEL AVIV — Israel’s COVID-19 vaccination program has become the envy of the world, reaching a third of the population in just over a month. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is already trying to leverage that narrative in his campaign ahead of the March 23 election, Israel’s fourth in two years. But behind that curtain of…
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News How Israel and West Virginia succeeded with vaccine rollout – for really different reasons
Elie Klein and Barry Wendell have little in common other than both being Jews who grew up in Baltimore. Klein is 40, works for a non-profit and now lives in Beit Shemesh, a commuter town halfway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Wendell is 71, semi-retired and lives in Morgantown, W.Va. But the two men –…
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Culture Orbisculate: How a made-up word became a way to honor a father lost to Covid
Hilary and Jonathan Krieger do not remember the first time their father, Neil, used the word “orbisculate.” They were just kids then, and he said the made-up word (pronounced ȯr-BIS-kyoo-leyt) meant “to accidentally squirt juice and/or pulp into one’s eye” or other body part — as in, what happens whenever one attempts to eat a…
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Fast Forward Ye debuts ‘Heil Hitler’ music video that includes a sample of a Hitler speech
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Culture Is Pope Leo Jewish? Ask his distant cousins — like me
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Opinion The staggering hypocrisy behind Trump’s deal to free the last living American hostage
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Fast Forward Russell Brand defends Ye’s ‘Heil Hitler’ music video
In Case You Missed It
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Fast Forward School vouchers would expand nationwide under federal proposal cheered by Orthodox groups
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Yiddish ווער האָט איבערגעלאָזט די קונסטווערק אין אַ פּאַרק אין סאַן־פֿראַנציסקאָ?Who abandoned this artwork in a San Francisco park?
דער שאַפֿער פֿון די ווערק, אַרי לאָשאַקאָװ, איז אומגעקומען אין פּאַריז אין 1941 בעת דער נאַצי־אָקופּאַציע.
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Fast Forward Canada, England and France vow ‘concrete actions’ over Israel’s Gaza war expansion and blockade
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Fast Forward US hostage envoy: ‘We’re closer than we ever were’ to a deal with Hamas
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