Coronavirus

Aryeh Dienstag and Penina Dienstag respond to the articles by Sharon Galper-Grossman, Shamai Grossman, and Alan Jotkowitz regarding vaccine allocation.

In commemoration of Rav Amital's tenth Yahrzeit, Joe Wolfson, JLIC Rabbi at NYU, shares how the legacy of Rav Amital inspired his community's humanitarian efforts during the Covid19 pandemic.

As the Covid-19 pandemic looks like it might be subsiding, Ezra Schwartz, a Rosh Yeshiva at Yeshiva University, incisively examines competing trends toward decentralization of synagogue life and centralization of halakhic decision-making that are reshaping the Modern Orthodox world.

Given the duration of the pandemic, should we suffice with waiting to return to normal, or are there hard-fought lesssons we can reintroduce even once the pandemic passes? Lehrhaus Consulting Editor and Director of Education at Sefaria, Sara Wolkenfeld, uses our recent experiences to gain new perspective on what tefilla, minyan and shul are really all about.

In this imaginative short story from David Zvi Kalman, as synagogue attendance shrinks, the buildings themselves begin to grow.

In her debut poem, Sophia Katz mourns the loss of a local rabbi.

Gabriel Greenberg looks at a Talmudic passage on what to do when you don’t know which day is Shabbat and the insights it provides for our current situation.

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

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.

The creative responses of Jewish Day Schools to the pandemic demonstrate that the time has come to think out of the box and reimagine high school education. Hillel Rapp, Director of Education at Bnei Akiva Schools of Toronto, outlines a provocative, comprehensive vision for reimagining high schools in the 21st century.