Helen Chernikoff is the Forward’s News Editor. She came to the Forward from The Jewish Week, where she served as the first web director and created both a blog dedicated to disability issues and a food and wine website. Before that, she covered the housing, lodging and logistics industries for Reuters, where she could sit at her desk and watch her stories move the stock market. Helen has a Master’s of Public Administration from Columbia University and a BA in History and French from Amherst College. She is also a rabbinical school dropout. Contact her at chernikoff@forward.com and follow her on Twitter at @thesimplechild.
Helen Chernikoff
By Helen Chernikoff
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Life Diary of a Day-School Mom: ‘My daughter doesn’t see the need for pants’
Our kids’ school, the Hannah Senesh Community Day School in Brooklyn, is very on top of things. The attention to detail is really something fine, and it’s reflected in the number of emails they send me, some of which I manage to read. It sometimes makes me, a working mom with average organizational skills, feel…
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Fast Forward Rabbis cancel Shabbat, Jewish life in Teaneck to help stop coronavirus
Rabbis in Bergen County, N.J. have canceled Shabbat, and communal life altogether, in order to help public health officials slow the spread of coronavirus, according to a statement released Thursday. They have ordered that their community stay home with their immediate families, forbidding any gatherings larger than that. From services in synagogues, to classes in…
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News Jews will vote for Sanders against Trump, but many won’t like it. Why?
Four years ago, Loren Selig was thrilled to support Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont for the Democratic nomination for president. Now, not so much. Like Sanders, she’s a New York transplant to New England and a passionate progressive. In 2016, she saw his emphasis on people caring for one another as very Jewish. But this…
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News More closings, Jewish Funders Network conference canceled
Editor’s note: This article originally said, incorrectly, that Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas had self-quarantined after attending last week’s AIPAC policy conference, where several of the 18,000 attendees have tested positive for coronavirus. In fact, Cruz, a Republican, took the steps because he had interacted with an infected person at a different conference, the Conservative…
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Fast Forward As many as 100 shiva attendees exposed to coronavirus in Maryland
One of three residents of Montgomery County, Md. who contracted the coronavirus on a cruise in Egypt attended a Jewish mourning ritual at a retirement community before before getting diagnosed with the disease and exposed between 70 and 100 attendees to it. In the ritual, known as sitting shiva, family members of the deceased receive…
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Fast Forward I saw a Nazi flag at a Sanders rally and I had to act — for my Jewish dad
Editor’s note: A teenaged boy and a friend tore down the Nazi flag a protestor unfurled at Thursday’s Bernie Sanders rally in Phoenix. This is the teenager’s account of the event, lightly edited for clarity. He spoke on the condition of anonymity out of concerns for his personal safety. I decided to go to the…
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Fast Forward Yeshiva University closes campus, citing student infected with COVID-19
The United States’ biggest Jewish educational institution, Yeshiva University, closed its main campus on Wednesday, citing confirmation that a student has been diagnosed with COVID-19, the disease caused by the highly contagious coronavirus. The school expects that it will reopen on Thursday, according to an email alert. The student is the son of a man…
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Fast Forward Here’s what to read to understand why babies got herpes from circumcisions.
“Metzitzah b’peh” is a circumcision rite in which the circumciser, or mohel, cleans the wound where the infant’s foreskin was removed by sucking it with his mouth. The practice is conducted mainly in the Haredi Jewish community, and periodically causes infants to contract a form of herpes that is found in adult saliva. In New…
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Fast Forward Why neo-Nazis marched in Ohio this weekend, and almost every weekend in the US
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Opinion The group behind Project 2025 has a plan to protect Jews. It will do the opposite.
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Opinion Just about every interpretation of Trump’s narrow election victory is wrong
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News Texas schools want to add Queen Esther to the curriculum. Here’s why Jews (and many Christians) are opposed.
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Fast Forward Rep. Ritchie Torres, outspoken pro-Israel advocate, is dropping hints that he could run for NY governor
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Fast Forward Ursula Haverbeck, infamous German Holocaust denier known as ‘Nazi grandma,’ dies at 96
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Fast Forward A Jewish museum in Tulsa held a funeral for remains of Holocaust victims it kept for years
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Sports Texas A&M’s Sam Salz cherishes his first taste of DI college football — and the opportunity to inspire fellow Orthodox Jews
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