Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic and its affect on Jewish communities around the world.
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The Latest
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Opinion Shabbat matters even more now
Previous Article Next Article I bow at the knees, looking to the east, in my kitchen. First left, then right, then center. As Kabbalat Shabbat services proceed on my iPad, streaming my synagogue on Facebook Live, I bow during “L’Cha Dodi,” as I have every Friday night for the past eight weeks that I’ve sheltered…
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Opinion American Jews will abandon Israel if it annexes territory under cover of COVID
Previous Article Next Article Change is coming for the American Jewish community. This change will not be the result of the current pandemic, but the pandemic will offer it cover — a microscopic Trojan Horse. The resulting damage to the American Jewish-Israel relationship may be irreparable. The government currently forming in Israel has only one…
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Opinion Climate change, inequality, anti-Semitism, occupation: Corona is a chance for a reset
Previous Article Next Article Never has the period between Passover and Shavuot been like this. The 49 days of counting the Omer, to which I have been a bit too episodically attentive over the years, have never had more significance to me. Today, these seven weeks provide a measuring stick for our confinement during the…
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Opinion Everything we relied on has failed us. Where can we turn but to God?
Previous Article Next Article There is a section of the morning prayers that not everyone says. I myself, in a pre-coronavirus world, found myself often omitting it, a casualty of hectic schedules and a busy world that would just not stop. Until it did. The prayer is sourced in a Midrashic text (Tana Dvei Eliyahu,…
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Opinion A newfound humility: We’re in this together.
Previous Article Next Article The unprecedented nature of what we’re experiencing and its radical implication for virtually every aspect of our individual and collective lives means that we cannot yet say how our reality will be permanently altered in the wake of the coronavirus. But there is one realization from this still early chapter of…
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Opinion We were ‘building-rich’ and ‘millennial-hungry’. Now, a reversal.
Previous Article Next Article As a Jewish community, we will hopefully soon dig ourselves out of the COVID-19 pandemic. We will look for meaning and opportunities from this unprecedented crisis. The Hebrew word for crisis is “mash’ber,” a word also used to refer to the birthing stool upon which a woman in ancient times sat…
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Opinion Judaism is evolving. Sacred life on screen is here to stay
Previous Article Next Article Every day at 3 p.m., for the past seven weeks, D. sits up in his hospital bed in Manhattan, turns on his iPad, and joins me along with 50 or so others from all over the world, at our afternoon minyan, called Daily SoulSpa. Like millions worldwide, D. now finds solace…
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Opinion Boomers becoming Zoomers is a feminist triumph!
Previous Article Next Article About a month after my husband and I — denizens of the pandemic’s most vulnerable age cohort — quarantined ourselves, I realized to my surprise that I was becoming a black belt in Zoom. Not only had I participated in two online seders and successfully navigated a flotilla of virtual meetings…
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Opinion No, the West Bank can’t be to Israel what Puerto Rico is to the US
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