Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt was the Life/Features editor at the Forward. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Salon, and Tablet, among others.
Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt
By Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt
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Life Faith, family and funerals: The pandemic through a rebbetzin’s lens
As a public service during this pandemic, the Forward is providing free, unlimited access to all coronavirus articles. If you’d like to support our independent Jewish journalism, click here. I write this from a makeshift war-room: lists of synagogue-members’ phone numbers and holy books spread out over the desk, a bottle of Purell in the…
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Life Isolated in Rockland County, worried about Williamsburg: A quarantine diary
Mrs. Hersh, a matriarch of a large clan in the Satmar Hasidic community of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, usually approaches the Passover Seder with a royal touch. Every year, in the month before Passover, Hersh makes a trip to the Bergdorf Goodman’s department store in Manhattan and buys herself an evening gown. She sets the Seder table…
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Life Beards and face masks: Boro Park prepares for Passover
A year ago, I profiled Avi Kaye, an Orthodox street photographer who mostly works in Boro Park and Williamsburg, and who posts his photographs on an Instagram account, ‘Hasidim in USA.’. As COVID-19 hit the Orthodox community, I noticed that Kaye was posting photographs of Orthodox Jews wearing face masks on Instagram — he was…
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News Burial society organization suggests new rituals; Brooklyn funeral home overwhelmed
An Orthodox funeral home in Brooklyn, where a video shows nine shrouded bodies stacked on the floor, is so overwhelmed that on Tuesday it called for volunteers with minivans and SUVs to ferry the dead to cemeteries for burial. In a message circulated via What’s App, Menachem A. Bloom, who works at the funeral home,…
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Fast Forward In Rockland County, 45 positive cases of coronavirus
Rockland County officials released a statement tonight confirming a total of 45 positive cases of coronavirus in the New York county. All those who had frequented the Ohr Chaim synagogue on March 8, the Church of Nyack on March 8, the L’Dor adult care facility on March 11 and March 13, and the Karlin Stolin…
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News Orthodox doctors plead with community — via viral WhatsApp messages
The voice of Ari Greenwald, an emergency-medicine doctor in Toronto, played on thousands of Orthodox Jews’ smartphones on Wednesday, warning that the novel coronavirus “has been spreading throughout our community like wildfire.” “This virus is so much smarter than all of us,” he said in a voice note that went viral on Orthodox WhatsApp. Greenwald…
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News The loneliest Shabbat: Bracing for another holy day in quarantine
Vera Koppel, 84-year old Holocaust survivor and resident of New Rochelle, is something of a local community organizer. She was born in Budapest, moved to the United States after the 1956 Hungarian revolution, and today is an active member of the Young Israel of New Rochelle, where she runs the “Ruach” weekly group for senior…
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Life Praying in the face of coronavirus— via conference call
On the Fast of Esther, thousands of Orthodox Jews joined in communal prayer — in arranged simultaneous times to pray, or by conference calls. At 9:30am EST, several Haredi organizations called for a worldwide Psalm recitation, in response to Agudath Israel’s call to prayer; at 12:30pm EST, the Orthodox Union organized a conference call for…
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