News

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Five Jewish nonprofits are among about 100 that are asking Congress to inject $60 billion into the sector to weather the coronavirus pandemic. The groups in their letter this week say that they are on the frontline of assisting the poor during the crisis and that… Read more »

(JTA) — When it became clear that the COVID-19 pandemic would reach Israel, Elli Rosenberg was one of a small number of medical professionals at the Soroka Medical Center in Beersheva to answer a call for volunteers to treat the sick. Rosenberg, a clinical immunologist who works as an… Read more »

HIAS created National Refugee Shabbat 5780 as a moment for congregations, organizations, and individuals around the country to dedicate a Shabbat experience to refugees and asylum seekers. While the National Refugee Shabbat was planned For March 20-21, local congregations such as M’kor Hayim are postponing to a later date… Read more »

(JTA) — As a teenager in Warsaw during the Holocaust, Krystyna Kowalska helped save a Jewish family of four who hid at her family’s bakery. She does not remember being afraid, even though if they had been discovered her whole family would have almost certainly been shot dead on… Read more »

(JTA) — As the world shut down around it, the Brooklyn headquarters of the worldwide Chabad movement carried on as usual — until late Tuesday night, when its neighborhood’s rabbinic leadership ordered synagogues closed to combat the spread of the coronavirus. All week, men came and went from the… Read more »

(JTA) — Amid all the justifiable focus on the coronavirus and its consequences, there was major political news in Israel this week: Benny Gantz, the Blue and White party leader, was tapped by the president to assemble a government coalition — bringing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu closer to his… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israeli President Reuven Rivlin will give Benny Gantz the task of forming a new government, his office said Sunday. Rivlin met Sunday with the heads of all the parties that won seats in Israel’s parliament in its last election earlier this month. At the end of… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) — The Israeli Cabinet approved a measure that will allow the Israel Security Agency, or Shin Bet, to track the cell phones of Israelis who are infected with coronavirus. The agency would not require a court order to perform the surveillance and it will be limited in… Read more »

(JTA) — Michele Sciama, a former secretary-general of the Jewish Community of Milan — the city’s local Jewish communal life organization — has died of the Covid-19 coronavirus. Sciama, known to his friends and family as Micky, was 79 when he died Monday morning. He is survived by his… Read more »

(JTA) — Earlier this week, the Jewish Agency for Israel said it was committed to keeping its emissaries in the United States, even as other groups brought theirs home amid the rising coronavirus crisis. But on Friday morning, with schools and synagogues across the country shuttering in an effort… Read more »

CHICAGO (JTA) — I am an infectious disease epidemiologist who worked at the World Health Organization on epidemics in over 25 countries around the world. As a physician and member of the Jewish community, I prize the Jewish teaching that places the saving of a life above all other laws and… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — Benita and Michael Ross are glad to live a half-hour’s drive from their granddaughter’s college, Brandeis University. So when the Boston-area school announced Thursday that it would close due to the novel coronavirus, Benita would have invited her granddaughter to stay with them. Except she… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — As of Thursday, Alex Matthews felt confident that the synagogue he leads in Newburyport, Massachusetts, would be able to hold services as scheduled this Shabbat. Even as growing numbers of Jewish communities began shutting down schools and synagogues and, when possible, moving operations online, Congregation… Read more »

(JTA) – The 16 Dead Seas Scroll fragments housed at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., are forgeries, museum officials said Friday. “We’re victims — we’re victims of misrepresentation, we’re victims of fraud,” CEO Harry Hargrove said at an academic conference hosted by the museum, National Geographic… Read more »

RIO DE JANEIRO (JTA) – Brazil’s largest Jewish community is closing schools in an effort to stop the spread of the coronavirus, despite the very low number of infections in the country so far. Sao Paulo is home to half of Brazil’s 120,000 Jews. Its Beit Yaacov school, Brazil’s… Read more »

(JTA) — The director of the Holocaust foundation founded by Steven Spielberg has called on Amazon Prime not to produce a second season of  “Hunters,” its fictional show about a crew of Nazi hunters in 1970s America. “Survivors of the Shoah sought justice, not revenge,” Stephen Smith, who heads… Read more »

(JTA) — A physician with family ties to senior White House adviser Jared Kushner said he solicited advice on Facebook for Kushner on how to deal with the coronavirus. Kurt Kloss, whose daughter is married to Kushner’s brother, on Wednesday asked a group of fellow emergency room physicians on… Read more »

(JTA) — Israeli police have launched criminal investigations of 21 residents who are suspected of violating the terms of their mandated isolation to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Most on the list are citizens who are believed to have been observed outside their homes during the 14-day period… Read more »

(JTA) — A rabbi at London’s iconic St John’s Wood Synagogue has contracted the coronavirus. Rabbi Yoni Golker told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Friday over the phone that he has had mild symptoms and is feeling better than when they first appeared last week. He is in quarantine… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — The run-up to Passover is the busiest time of the year for Masbia, a nonprofit that operates three kosher soup kitchens in Brooklyn and Queens. The organization has to order all kosher-for-Passover food and scrub one of its locations’ kitchens so it can prepare food… Read more »