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 What Jewish medical ethics can teach us about coronavirus
COVID-19, the disease outbreak caused by the new coronavirus, has already pushed health care systems to their limits. Overburdened American doctors may have to rely on triage, a system of prioritizing patients — and ultimately, lives — over one another. Looking from the outside, triage medicine can appear heartless and arbitrary. For doctors, it can…
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Community Rethinking Pharaoh’s leadership under the COVID-19 pandemic
National leaders have addressed the coronavirus pandemic in a variety of ways depending on their personalities and the forms of governments they lead. In China and Iran, for instance, the governments are authoritarian and the first response was denial. It seems that for authoritarian governments the presence of a virus is some kind of embarrassment…
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Community The Good People of Corona
I used to think the city reeked. The subway handles were a hub of germs and its people a taut rope, not yet snapped. But when the storm came here, to my adopted city, I no longer saw the dirt. What I saw instead was humanity. “You’re in the epicenter: New York,” they told me….
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Opinion We must recommit to helping refugees. We all come from Egypt.
As we face enormous uncertainties in dealing with COVID-19, we turn to our values to ground us. We confront the thin line between health and illness and we are inextricably connected in our collective desire for safety and health. We share the fragility of existence with an unbowed desire to connect with those suffering from…
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Culture Daily distraction: Coloring van Gogh
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. Chag sameach! Whether you’re off of work for Pesach, or trying to observe the holiday…
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News Layoffs force JCC leaders to ponder post-pandemic future and leave employees in the lurch
In a tidal wave of pandemic-related layoffs, hundreds of employees at Jewish community centers across the United States have been let go as the institutions, central organizing forces of Jewish life, have had to close their doors due to the coronavirus. The early numbers are staggering: Bay Area JCCs have furloughed some 700 people. Philadelphia’s…
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Fast Forward Jewish charity delivers Passover food to more than 200,000 homebound New Yorkers
Ahead of Passover, the Met Council for Jewish Poverty, a New York-based charity, delivered hundreds of thousands of packages of kosher-for-Passover food to senior citizens and others stuck at home because of coronavirus. With many afraid or unable to leave the house because of coronavirus, or facing financial instability because of coronavirus-related economic slowdown, the…
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Community Community is essential, to Judaism and recovery
In the Passover seder we are asked by the haggadah to treat ourselves “as if” we came out of Egypt — not just to tell the story but also to to experience the journey from slavery to freedom ourselves. We think that the hard part is sitting through many hours of storytelling (with family!), but…
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Opinion Outrage over Nicholas Kristof’s op-ed on sexual assault of Palestinians is missing the point
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News They texted about Torah and mitzvahs. Feds say they were insider trading
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Culture At Eurovision, Israel’s near triumph shows the limits of tolerance
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Opinion I run The Jewish Theological Seminary. Here’s the real story about President Isaac Herzog speaking at our commencement
In Case You Missed It
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Opinion The San Diego imam defended Oct. 7. His mosque still deserves our help
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Sports An op-ed compared an NBA team to Israel as underdog success stories. Then the threats poured in.
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Theater In ‘Waiting for Godot,’ the tragedy and comedy of the Jewish experience
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Fast Forward Rep. Jared Moskowitz becomes latest Jewish lawmaker to reveal antisemitic threats