This is 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 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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Culture Holocaust survivors are now receiving their first doses of the vaccine — and fame
Elderly Holocaust survivors are among the most susceptible to the current pandemic; 900 died of Covid in Israel alone. That is why it was heartening to see, on Twitter, one 97-year-old Holocaust survivor grinning because she had just beaten Covid, and another smiling after receiving her first dose of the vaccine. My 97-Year-old Great Grandma,…
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Art An artist in exile talks Tu B’Shvat tarot and working from her childhood home
During the pandemic, Jessica Tamar Deutsch has been considering exile as she relearns how to paint. Specifically, she’s been thinking about the title character in “The Lost Princess,” a story by Rabbi Nachman, the mystic founder of the Breslov Hasidic movement, about a young woman who disappears from her home after displeasing her kingly father….
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Culture Jews plead, once again: Listen to the lyrics of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’
Another state occasion, another misuse of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” Across the internet, fans of the poet are pleading: Stop the madness! On Jan. 19, 2021, before the reflecting pool by the Lincoln Memorial, gospel singer Yolanda Adams concluded a somber memorial to the over 400,000 Americans dead of Covid-19 with Cohen’s storied song of sex…
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News No refrigerators left: L.A.’s COVID-19 spike swamps Jewish mortuaries
On one recent Saturday night, mortuary director Moe Goldsman got his first call at 10 p.m., his second at 12:30 a.m., and his third at 1:45 a.m. He worked through the night and went to sleep at dawn. With coronavirus numbers skyrocketing in Southern California since Thanksgiving, Goldsman’s Sholom Mortuary is struggling to keep pace…
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Fast Forward These American teens ranked high in Israel’s International Bible Quiz, in strongest US showing in 50 years
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Fast Forward His kippah was a symbol of coexistence. Israeli police officers seized and destroyed it.
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Fast Forward DOJ’s indictment of Southern Poverty Law Center recalls Jewish groups’ use of informants to fight extremism