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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Fast Forward AIPAC cancels next year’s policy conference due to COVID
(JTA) — AIPAC has canceled its 2021 policy conference, citing the “continued uncertainties created by the COVID-19 pandemic.” Betsy Korn, the president of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, made the announcement in a letter sent to the organization’s membership on Sunday. The annual conference had been scheduled for March 7-9 in Washington, D.C. One…
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Culture Escape from New York — a third-generation migration tale
On March 7, I took a picture of a “child pile” in my Brooklyn apartment. Ten of my daughter’s friends had spent the night, celebrating the closing of a school play they’d worked on. The floor was a mess of sleeping bags, pillows, backpacks, soda bottles and empty bags of Doritos. A Happy Birthday banner…
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Community ‘Zoom shiva is shiva distilled to its essence’
I am one of those people with one of those stories. My mom, 83, went into the hospital in early April with something relatively routine. A few weeks and complications later, she went to a rehab to regain her strength. My dad delivered her reading glasses and an everything bagel to the door, knowing, of…
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Life We asked the experts: can teens see friends in a summer without camp?
Teenage summers are transformative times. Between the end of one school year and the beginning of the next, adolescents take on new roles at camp, become temporary members of the workforce, and enjoy evening cruises down back roads. They cement friendships, escape parents’ watchful eyes, and break the rules — just a little. “This is…
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Community ‘What religion was my cousin? What rituals could we all share?’
My cousin was born a Jew, accepted Christ, and died an atheist in a COVID ward in a Florida hospital. He was secretly laid to rest a week later, his Christian wife spreading his ashes on the grave of our observant Jewish grandmother in a private, unauthorized graveside funeral. Before the funeral, there were discussions…
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Community Mourning, healing, and proximity in a COVID world
There is a story told in the Talmud (Tractate Berakhot, 5b) about Rabbi Yohanan. He possessed a great healing ability, the unique ability to listen and hold the pain of the other, and he had also experienced unimaginable loss as 10 of his children died in his lifetime. In one famous story he goes to…
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Community American Jews were not only all at Sinai, but also all in Newport
Few celebrations occurred to mark this year’s Jewish American Heritage Month, which ends on Monday. Trapped in our houses and apartments while a plague ravages our country, somberness and anxiety are our constant companions. Our synagogues have been shuttered, our schools closed, and our community centers emptied. The mood and circumstances have not been conducive…
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Community ‘We both knew camp was a privilege’
Let me begin by telling you that I know this is frivolous. We are in the middle of a horrific pandemic that has upended our lives; more importantly, it has ended tens of thousands of lives But there is another situation that threatens our expectations: Summer is over before it has started—some day and overnight…
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Theater Why is everyone laughing at Anne Frank?
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Opinion It’s time for the pro-Palestinian movement to make a radical change
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Film & TV How a complete unknown created one of the most iconic music events of the 1970’s
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Opinion Trump drew Arab leaders into a historic peace agreement. Too bad about the one glaring caveat
In Case You Missed It
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Culture Honoring Rabbi Arthur Waskow – activist, pioneer and prophet
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News Should synagogues remove the Israeli flag from bimahs now? How a New York shul made the decision
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Books The Lakers were about to shock the NBA. But Shabbat had to end first.
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Fast Forward As Greenpoint’s Jewish community grows, so does this shul’s Hebrew school
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