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Faygie Holt

Faygie Holt

Faygie Holt is the columns editor and editor of the JNS Wire.

Rabbi Shlomo Litvin said “people have knocked on our door to say they are sorry this happened. I’ve also gotten texts, emails and calls of support from all over the country; it’s been very meaningful.”
More than 700 delegates and thousands of people from 35 countries participated in the online event necessitated by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
“The Internet can be tremendous force for good. It can bring people together and allow everyone a voice,” said Michael Gove, a member of Parliament in the United Kingdom. “But it is also the case that the Internet can be a cause for evil” and recruit “susceptible minds” to the “gospel of evil.”
“Simply put, there are no values advanced by giving her a forum to express her hateful and false views,” wrote the American Jewish Committee.
For months, Orthodox Jews have complained of a double standard as authorities seemed to let protesters in New York gather en masse while criticizing Jewish gatherings.
“We feel targeted, and his way of handling the situation is causing anti-Semitism to skyrocket to levels I haven’t seen in my lifetime,” Rivkie Feiner, a small-business owner in Rockland County, N.Y.
Whether synagogues or “whether talking about black churches or Roman Catholic Churches, the community must agree to the rules,” insisted New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
An emphasis has again been placed on New York, where large crowds typically celebrate the holiday, and where, along with other parts of the country, cases of infection are on the rise.
Swaths of land have been burned, homes and businesses destroyed, thousands of people displaced, and the air is increasingly harder to breathe, just as the Jewish holidays approach.
Some will spread out congregants for social distancing, some will go ahead with abbreviated prayer sessions, and some will arrange for online programs, keeping folks at home.
U.S. Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.) letter’s to the U.S. secretary of state, co-signed by 25 congressional colleagues, highlighted the fact that Ukraine’s travel ban has some exemptions.
“You all are on the front lines ... people will heed your advice in ways they won’t mine as surgeon general,” Dr. Jerome Adams told Jewish leaders.