Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic and its affect on Jewish communities around the world.
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Fast Forward Report: organizers of five Brooklyn High Holiday gatherings hit with $15,000 fines
The organizers of five Jewish religious gatherings in the Hasidic hub of Borough Park, Brooklyn, received maximum-allowable $15,000 fines for violating state rules limiting such gatherings to 10 people in areas where coronavirus infection rates are highest, sources told the New York Post. The city said that it handed out $150,000 total in fines in…
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Opinion What the current crisis shows about Haredi leadership and politics
The protests against COVID-19 restrictions by Haredi Jews in Brooklyn last week, which included burning masks and an attack on a Haredi journalist, were shocking. They seemed to represent a blatant defiance of public-health norms and plain old common sense. And they mark a new stage in the evolution of the Haredi community in the…
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Fast Forward After Borough Park protest leader arrested for inciting a riot, his followers mob home of Hasidic journalist
(JTA) — A dispute that has roiled Borough Park, an Orthodox neighborhood in Brooklyn, took a dark new turn Sunday night after Heshy Tischler, the man who led protests against COVID-19 restrictions there last week was arrested and charged with inciting a riot. The New York Police Department announced Sunday night that it had taken…
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News Orthodox Jews quietly defy coronavirus restrictions to celebrate last of the High Holidays
Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn proceeded with some indoor and outdoor holiday celebrations in their synagogues over the weekend, in defiance of restrictions limiting all religious gatherings to 10 or fewer people in neighborhoods where the rates of coronavirus infection have gone sharply up in recent weeks. On Saturday evening in Borough Park — a neighborhood…
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Community Trading places, Jewishly
Most Saturday afternoons, at around 3:00, I sit on a bench across the street from my apartment waiting for a friend to join me (masked, of course, and at a distance of at least six feet). My friend is Orthodox, and for most of her life she has taken Shabbat afternoon walks. These days I…
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News As seniors turn against Trump, are old Florida Jews among them?
So many seniors make their home in Florida that, for years, comedians have referred to the state as “God’s waiting room.” What every pollster’s mind these days is this: Who are they waiting to vote for? An estimated 29% of the state’s nine million voters are over 65, and recent polls suggest that support for…
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News Ahead of Simchat Torah street parties, mayor says NYPD not sure how to enforce new health rules
The New York City Police Department does not know how it will enforce new state restrictions on religious gatherings just days before Simchat Torah, a holiday typically celebrated in Orthodox communities with massive dance parties that spill onto the street. “The lawyers all have to get on the same page, and the NYPD has to…
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Fast Forward Orthodox journalist attacked, chased, called ‘Nazi’ at Jewish Borough Park protest
An ultra-Orthodox journalist who covers the religious Jewish community was set upon by participants in a protest against new coronavirus restrictions after the event’s leader ordered the crowd to chase him away. Jacob Kornbluh, who lives in Borough Park, Brooklyn, was covering an event organized by Heshy Tischler, an aspiring politician. Tishcler has recently risen…
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