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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News A Hasidic village’s coronavirus tests went from 34% positive to 4% in a month. The county health commissioner is asking how.
In the course of about a month, the Hasidic village of Kiryas Joel, N.Y., managed to drop its rate of positive tests for coronavirus infection by a dramatic 30 points — from 34.2% in the last week of September, to 4.2% this week, according to state data released Wednesday. Town leaders and New York Gov….
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Community I’m a doctor, but I’m not mad at the Orthodox
In stark contrast to the impression left by legions of news reports about Haredi Jews in Brooklyn defying public health rules around the coronavirus, I have found over years of working with ultra-Orthodox communities in New York and Jerusalem that members of these communities care deeply about health. Haredi communities have their own system of…
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News Orthodox neighborhoods are getting fewer tests for Covid. Why?
Borough Park’s high Covid case rate is well-documented. But city data also shows that the neighborhood has among the lowest testing rates in New York City. The relative lack of testing could mean that Borough Park and other coronavirus hotspots are actually even hotter than we know, said Mark Harrington, the executive director of Treatment…
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Culture This father-daughter duo is podcasting through the pandemic — and they won’t stop until they know ‘everything’
10-year-old Rasa Smith used to feel jealous when she heard kids on the radio. “I’ll never be on a podcast,” she recalled thinking while listening to a program hosted by a fellow pre-teen. But on that front, she’s proven herself very wrong. When the pandemic shut down schools in her hometown of Missoula, Mont., Rasa,…
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Fast Forward Satmar wedding made ‘family-only’ after NY officials order halt to plans for ‘tens of thousands’ of attendees
(JTA) — The wedding of the grandson of Satmar Grand Rabbi Zalman Teitelbaum will be for family only after plans for a reception for tens of thousands of well-wishers drew condemnation from New York officials. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Saturday that state health officials had issued a formal public health order putting a…
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Life Portraits of the healers: Orthodox doctors and nurses in their own words
They stumble as they speak, hitting verbal walls as they struggle to balance emotion and expertise. They are exhausted after months of fighting COVID-19 as medical professionals — and of facing misinformation and mistrust when they return home to Orthodox communities, where skepticism about the coronavirus runs high. “It’s hard, it’s very hard,” one Orthodox…
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Community I’m a secularist. But my brother’s illness saw me lighting Shabbat candles.
In the first few days of my brother’s illness from COVID, I tell work friends on Zoom that he is sick. I am in lockdown on a different continent, and unsure what I can do. My colleague messages me that he will say a mass for my brother down in El Paso with his fellow…
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Letters The virus is the enemy — not us
Dear Editor: In an Op-Ed published in The Forward, Avi Shafran of Agudath Israel denigrated the Judaism practiced by the overwhelming majority of Jews in New York. He seemed to be arguing that only Haredi Jewish leaders can speak for our city’s Jewish community. This could not be further from the truth. With COVID-19 once…
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Fast Forward Why neo-Nazis marched in Ohio this weekend, and almost every weekend in the US
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Opinion The group behind Project 2025 has a plan to protect Jews. It will do the opposite.
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Opinion Just about every interpretation of Trump’s narrow election victory is wrong
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News Texas schools want to add Queen Esther to the curriculum. Here’s why Jews (and many Christians) are opposed.
In Case You Missed It
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Fast Forward Rep. Ritchie Torres, outspoken pro-Israel advocate, is dropping hints that he could run for NY governor
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Fast Forward Ursula Haverbeck, infamous German Holocaust denier known as ‘Nazi grandma,’ dies at 96
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Fast Forward A Jewish museum in Tulsa held a funeral for remains of Holocaust victims it kept for years
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Sports Texas A&M’s Sam Salz cherishes his first taste of DI college football — and the opportunity to inspire fellow Orthodox Jews
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