This is 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 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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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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Antisemitism Decoded The antisemites are enjoying themselves
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Opinion American Jews have a Hasan Piker problem. Solving it is going to hurt
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Fast Forward UCLA student government condemns campus Hillel for hosting former hostage
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Sports Today’s American Jews finally have their era’s Sandy Koufax
In Case You Missed It
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Culture An Indiana town had no Jewish cemetery. When its mayor died, it built one
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Culture Apple TV’s ‘Your Friends & Neighbors’ just gave us a stunningly authentic Jewish episode
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Yiddish World How young people once used Yiddish personal ads to find a partner
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News ‘The settlers are winning now’: West Bank activists aiding Palestinians are increasingly targets themselves