This is the Forward’s coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic and its affect on Jewish communities around the world.
COVID-19
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Culture Daily distraction: Make this Passover a celebration
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. Happy Passover. For many of us, it’s going to be a weird one. As we’ve…
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Opinion I repressed my parents’ final Seder before Auschwitz – until coronavirus
My parents were among the few: a married couple who survived the Auschwitz-Birkenau killing machine, a string of slave labor camps and death marches. In March 1944, the Nazis marched into their Hungarian hometown of Sevlus, a prosperous agricultural city surrounded by the Carpathian Mountains. Liquidating its Jews was a top priority, pursued with industrial…
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Community Feeling the Passover spirit even in quarantine
I have a confession to make: as a working mom, Passover is my least favorite holiday. It evokes images of endless cooking, cleaning, and arcane restrictions with the added pressure of making the holiday meaningful for my children. Furthermore, as an American married to a Frenchman and living in the Netherlands, the idea of spending…
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Culture Reading Wordsworth in quarantine
At the tail end of my first year out of college, my then-boyfriend and I had a serious conversation about where we wanted to move. We’d stayed in St. Louis after graduating, but it was time to go. I wanted New York. He wanted San Francisco. We sat face-to-face on my bed, in my sweet…
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Community A new life and a virtual bris
In Genesis 17:12 God tells Abraham, “This is my covenant… And he that is eight days old shall be circumcised among you, every male throughout your generations…” Apparently God left out the part about pandemics. And that a mohel could provide a substitute mohel for the “virtual” brit milah — the bris — because one…
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Fast Forward Two mikvahs operating in Williamsburg despite rabbis’ orders to close
Two Satmar mikvahs are unofficially open despite claims to the contrary, according to WhatsApp messages, videos and eyewitness testimony provided to the Forward. The videos, taken between 5:30 a.m. and 6:15 a.m. on Tuesday, show Orthodox Jews coming and going from Satmar synagogue buildings on South 8th Street and Lorimer Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, in…
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Opinion The loss of the Novominsker Rebbe, Rabbi Yaakov Perlow, leaves a gaping hole in our community
I will not write about Rabbi Yaakov Perlow, the Novominsker Rebbe, who passed away suddenly this morning. I will not write about him because I simply cannot, for several reasons. First of all, my personal interactions with him were limited, to just a handful of private conversations. But more importantly, to describe him accurately would…
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Fast Forward Lakewood Jews raise thousands for family of kosher store employee who died of COVID-19
More than $15,000 has been raised in three days for the former employee of a Lakewood, N.J. kosher grocery store who died of the coronavirus. Lancelot Diaz-Hernandez, 20, passed away after spending two weeks in the hospital fighting complications from COVID and pneumonia, the Asbury Park Press reported. A GoFundMe page to aid with medical…
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Culture RFK Jr.’s poems to Olivia Nuzzi are peak cringe — so were King Solomon’s
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News DNA test kits spark a surge of online conversions to Judaism in the U.S.
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Opinion What does Mamdani’s response to synagogue protests mean for Jews? No one will like the answer.
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Opinion More than 25% of Israelis want to leave the country. How did we get here?
In Case You Missed It
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Fast Forward Pope Leo meets with Erdogan, says two-state solution is the ‘only’ path forward in Middle East
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Fast Forward Meet Zevi Eckhaus, the Jewish college football bowl-bound quarterback who prays at the 18-yard line
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Fast Forward Cory Booker has long embraced Jewish tradition. Now he has married a Jewish woman.
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Culture She was a dancer who leapt to the top of her field — then the Trump administration fired her
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