Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic and its affect on Jewish communities around the world.
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Culture The Jewish and Jew-ish nominees for a strange 2020 Tonys
The 2020 Tony Awards, like weddings, vacations, work commutes and so much of the other stuff of life, went missing this summer. But, the show must go on — however belatedly. The nominees for this year’s ceremony were announced Thursday and like so much else in this strange new normal, they are incomplete but also…
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Opinion ‘Blasphemy’ is non-halachic Jews name-calling Haredim
In her denial of a temporary restraining order to prevent Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s latest, onerous rules for “virus uptick areas” in several Orthodox-heavy neighborhoods, Judge Kiyo A. Matsumoto of Federal District Court in Brooklyn posed a rhetorical question. “How,” she asked, “can we ignore the compelling state interest in protecting the health and life of…
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News Breaking up services didn’t work. Fines didn’t work. Will cutting funding keep yeshivas closed?
Police officers have failed to break up large gatherings of mask-less people. Synagogues and schools have stayed open despite being fined $15,000. Now New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is trying a new way of getting Orthodox Jewish schools in areas with high coronavirus infection rates to shut down: hit them in the wallet. An executive…
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Opinion If you want to help Haredim fight COVID-19, help — don’t hector
Rising cases of COVID-19 in New York’s densely Orthodox neighborhoods, and the protests there that followed city and state lockdown measures, have inspired a spate of recent public statements and articles urging the Haredi, or ultra-Orthodox, community to take the virus more seriously. The authors are generally Jewish, whether Haredi, modern Orthodox, or non-Orthodox, and…
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Community As the Peace Corps turns 60, we must revisit its lessons
In the early hours of October 14, 1960, 60 years ago, Senator John F. Kennedy arrived at Ann Arbor’s Michigan Union to spend the night, having debated the Republican nominee, Richard Nixon, earlier that evening. Despite it being 2:00 a.m., some 10 thousand students stood assembled waiting for him. Kennedy had not planned to speak,…
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Community A pandemic Simchat Torah done safely
From the start of the COVID-19 High Holiday season, I dreaded Simchat Torah. I knew that Rosh Hashanah in lockdown wouldn’t be an issue for me. Being a rabbi has its perks — I’m familiar with the prayer service, amused by my own off-key singing and accustomed to blowing the Shofar for my family every…
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News The ‘Magenta Yenta’ is back, and she’s Heshy Tischler’s defense lawyer
On Wednesdays, Mindy Meyer wears pink. But for court appearances, she wears black. On Monday she donned her usual courtroom attire — complete with a black mask — for the arraignment of her latest client, Heshy Tischler. Meyer, an Orthodox Jew from Brooklyn, won a measure of tabloid fame in 2012 for mounting a failed…
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News “There’s no going back’ What rabbis learned from the extraordinary High Holidays of 2020
I am not a rabbi — but am I proud of my colleagues who are. Along with cantors, soloists, educators, executive directors, board donors and laypeople in hundreds of congregations and spiritual communities, they pulled off one of the most extraordinary historic pivots in synagogue life. “This is epic,” Rabbi Steven Leder of Wilshire Boulevard…
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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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