Coronavirus

The CDC and FDA have recently endorsed booster shots for the Covid vaccine. But there are those who argue that those doses should be allocated to third world countries instead. Sharon Galper Grossman and Shamai Grossman weigh in about what Halakhah has to say about the issue.

This year, instead of thinking about the reasons for Jonah’s flight from Nineveh in particular, we can gain a new appreciation for his need to break free altogether. Ahead of Yom Kippur, Erica Brown considers the unique resonance of the book of Jonah in an era marked by isolation and quarantine.

What is it like to make aliyah from New Jersey precisely at a time when North American Jewry is suffering more heavily than Israel? Ahead of Yom Yerushalayim, Sarah Rindner, drawing on Yehuda ha-Levi and Yehudah Amichai, reflects.

Hillel Broder reflects on the edges in life, in his latest poem for the Lehrhaus.

Sharon Galper Grossman and Shamai Grossman examine the halakhic permissibility of vaccine mandates by governments and employers.

Shlomo Zuckier explores competing theological trends underlying rabbinic guidance at the beginning of the Coronavirus pandemic.

Many synagogue goers found the abbreviated High Holiday services we recently concluded quite appealing. Need we eventually go back to the way it was before coronavirus? Not really, argues Moshe Kurtz, surveying the substantial halakhic support for shortening the services every year.

Shumel Hain discusses how we can bridge the "Tragic Gap" between the world envisioned in the blessing on budding fruit tress and our current reality of pandemic and tragedy

Today, we share letters to the editor by Ephraim Chamiel, Steven Gotlib, and Moshe Kurtz.

Alan Jotkowitz disagrees with Sharon Galper Grossman’s and Shamai Grossman’s halakhic argument that wealthy nations should provide booster shots to their own populations before contributing doses to poorer countries.