An in-person event scheduled for March 15, 2020, in Los Angeles switched to virtual just 3 days before the event. The event was a combination of food, music, and lecture. Subsequently, the Jewish Language Project made the video available to all online and added many COVID-related resources to the website, including a Zoom haggadah for online seders and a list of alternative foods for those who couldn't access the traditional ritual foods.
Families planning bar/bat/bnai mitzvah during the COVID pandemic. Parents share resources and collaborate to tweak old rituals and practices and create new ones.
Please see attached for a complete guide to all the virtual work we did in 2020 for queer Jewish youth – specifically with a focus on those from Orthodox homes.
We didn't have any fresh vegetables for chazeret so we used dried oregano! Karpas was cilantro. We made haroset from fruits we already had, such as pineapples and cranberries -- not very good! At least we had an unopened box of Osem brand matzah in the pantry left over from Passover 2019 (doesn't sound kosher, I know). My husband is Yemenite and at the very least we had delicious food in the form of Yemenite soup and kitniyot (Mexican beans and corn).
On the afternoon of Nissan 14, 5780 or April 8, 2020, a rabbi contracted through Chabad.org sold the rights to our chametz to a gentile for the duration of the Passover holiday. The chametz was still physically present in our home and the temptation proved too great for my husband, who was eating the gentile's cake within hours of the transaction.
On the afternoon of Nissan 14, 5780 or April 8, 2020, a rabbi contracted through Chabad.org sold the rights to our chametz to a gentile for the duration of the Passover holiday. The chametz was still physically present in our home and the temptation proved too great for my husband, who was eating the gentile's cake within hours of the transaction.
On the afternoon of Nissan 14, 5780 or April 8, 2020, a rabbi contracted through Chabad.org sold the rights to our chametz to a gentile for the duration of the Passover holiday. The chametz was still physically present in our home and the temptation proved too great for my husband, who was eating the gentile's cake within hours of the transaction.
Webinar recordings from Prizmah: Center for Jewish Day Schools tell the story of how schools have had to pivot during the COVID pandemic.
Recordings include
How to help students thrive in uncertain times
Retaining students in changing times
Edtech tools for Judaics classrooms
Space: your most valuable asset
School schedules: covid-19 friendly options
Making fundraising work: a guide for small school development in a pandemic
Going virtual with SAR high school's director of technology
The Prizmah Knowledge Center hosted over 120 COVID related resource pages directly developed to support schools through the COVID pandemic. This includes
videos
research
social emotional resources
recruitment and retention resources
development resources
HaYidion articles
And more
Professor Jack Wertheimer of the Jewish Theological Seminary talks with Cheryl Maayan, head of the Saul Mirowitz Jewish Community School in St. Louis, and Dr. Steven Lorch, head of Kadimah Day School in Los Angeles, about how Jewish day schools have fared during the pandemic. Wertheimer proposes trends that have set up many day schools for success in the face of the overwhelming challenges that schools and families have experienced.
In January 2021, Prizmah concluded a JFNA Scenario Planning project for Jewish day schools and yeshivas. This project was developed by JFNA and funded through the generosity of the Mandel Foundation. Over the course of two months, using the framework developed by JFNA, we imagined multiple scenarios that Jewish day schools and yeshivas might face and charted a path through the current Covid-19 crisis and into the post-pandemic time horizon. The scenarios envisioned two factors shaping our future scenarios: To what extent will our ability to gather (social, workplace and civic) be possible? and, What level of financial stability will we have? This slide deck presents the findings from the group.
This issue examines how schools are adapting to the challenging circumstances of conducting business during the Covid-19 pandemic. Articles explore ways that school leaders are managing to organize stakeholders in a crisis; that schools are collaborating with each other and internally as a community to strengthen all systems; that educators are reinventing Jewish education through these exigencies by using online tools and shifting their pedagogies. Authors seek to find changes in the present that may have lasting value for a future, post-Covid reality.
Pulse survey results that provide a profile of Jewish day school development and enrollment, and explore the effects of COVID on day school finances, financial aid and more.
The following guidance was prepared by the Faith and Halakhic Standards Committee of the Messianic Jewish Rabbinical Council.
The global coronavirus pandemic has left a tragic (and still-rising) death toll and has radically disrupted our communal way of life. Meanwhile, the worldwide scientific endeavor to find solutions for COVID-19 immunity has yielded numerous vaccines in various stages of clinical trial, two of which have been proven (through rigorous testing and approval processes) to be both safe and effective. According to public health experts, ending the pandemic soonest and most safely requires that a substantial proportion of the population be vaccinated.
What does the Torah and our tradition teach regarding the obligation to be vaccinated against a virus spreading pandemically?
These videos, contributed by Howard Mortman (Communications Director at CSPAN), center around Rabbi Romi Cohn. As Mortman notes in his book (see Source), Cohn was a Holocaust survivor and member of the Jewish underground in his native Czechoslovakia. He delivered the House prayer on January 29, 2020-- 75 years after the liberation of Auschwitz. Unfortunately, Cohn died from COVID-19 two months after delivering his house prayer. He is remembered in the House daily prayer on March 27, 2020.
An interfaith Chavurah made up of members of Congregation Beth Or in Maple Glen, Pennsylvania celebrates the fourth night of Hanukkah together over Zoom. A pandemic didn't stop this Chavurah's 20+ year tradition!
