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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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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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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Fast Forward Why the Antisemitism Awareness Act now has a religious liberty clause to protect ‘Jews killed Jesus’ statements
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Culture Trump wants to honor Hannah Arendt in a ‘Garden of American Heroes.’ Is this a joke?
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Fast Forward The invitation said, ‘No Jews.’ The response from campus officials, at least, was real.
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Opinion A Holocaust perpetrator was just celebrated on US soil. I think I know why no one objected.
In Case You Missed It
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Opinion The secret cost of Israel’s wars ravaged my family. It’s only getting worse
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Yiddish מחשבֿות פֿון אַן אַהיים־געקומענעם (אַ מלחמה־טאָגגבוך)Reflections of a soldier after returning home (a wartime diary)
דער מחבר איז אַ סטודענט אינעם ירושלימער העברעיִשן אוניווערסיטעט, אינעם צווייטן יאָר ייִדיש־לימוד
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Fast Forward Why the Antisemitism Awareness Act now has a religious liberty clause to protect ‘Jews killed Jesus’ statements
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News At Harvard, reports on antisemitism and anti-Palestinian bias reflect campus conflict over Israel
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