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 Meet the rabbi, military chaplain and Jewish educator who wants to thank you for your service
In less than a week, Larry Freedman was called to fight the coronavirus epidemic on two different fronts. As a religious school director in Pittsburgh, Rabbi Freedman was tasked with moving an entire curriculum online after most public spaces were shuttered due to the virus in late March. Just a few days later, he was…
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Culture Daily distraction: National poetry month
Welcome to your daily distraction, our recommendations for ways to stay engaged and entertained while we socially distance ourselves to combat the novel coronavirus outbreak. You can find our past recommendations here; many of the opportunities we’ve highlighted are ongoing. A quarantine haiku: Out of my window The streets below are empty Good; flatten the…
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Community It’s all about relationships, especially in a pandemic
I write this sitting in a Hilton hotel room in what is known as “Med City,” Rochester, Minnesota. My wife Susie and I have been in this same room since February 6 when we arrived to enter the world-famous Mayo Clinic kidney transplant center. That amounts to nearly 60 days, isolated from most family and…
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News Laughter is deemed essential as hospital clowns continue to work during corona
Back when I was in high school in New Rochelle, N.Y., I would transform every Tuesday during religious school at Temple Israel into “Oscar Lasagna.” It was my clown name, which I earned by enrolling in the goofiest elective possible: Jewish medical clowning. I went on to clown regularly in children’s hospitals, both in the…
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News Letter from Palm Beach: Santiago Lopez goes from the counter to the front lines
It is Wednesday at noon, just hours before the Passover holiday begins, at the Reserve Shopping Center in Boca Raton, Flor. Inside the cars lined up in neat rows outside Ben’s Deli, masked customers patiently wait for their kosher Passover Package — matzo, roasted chicken or brisket, haroset, the works. No one dares enter the…
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Culture Daily distraction: American Symphony Orchestra goes to the opera
Welcome to your daily distraction, our recommendations for ways to stay engaged and entertained while we socially distance ourselves to combat the novel coronavirus outbreak. You can find our past recommendations here; many of the opportunities we’ve highlighted are ongoing. Shabbat shalom. I hope the first days of Passover have brought you a renewed sense…
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Israel News Israeli Haredim, blamed for COVID outbreaks, could see their communities forever changed
After a spike of coronavirus infections in Haredi Orthodox Jewish areas, Israel is now experiencing a flareup of a more familiar ailment in the socially fractured country: religious tension. “It’s like a barrel of oil,” said Kimmy Caplan, a professor of Jewish history at Bar-Ilan University, of the strain between Orthodox and secular Israelis in…
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Community ‘It felt more meaningful, more symbolic:’ Readers share their seder stories
We knew these seder nights would be different from all others. Turned out some of those differences were positive. My own extended family seemed to talk over each other less via Zoom than we do in person, and we relaxed our recitation of the hagaddah to make room for more personal interpretations, which may also…
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Fast Forward As starvation mounts in Gaza, Jewish voices increasingly rise up in consternation
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