Archiving COVID-19 As it Happens
Crowdsourcing has become a vital tool for many of the Jewish institutions attempting to record and preserve the community’s response to the pandemic.
Crowdsourcing has become a vital tool for many of the Jewish institutions attempting to record and preserve the community’s response to the pandemic.
Throughout the ages, the Jewish people have developed customs, rituals and observances to guide us and provide comfort when a loved one dies. Moment Senior Editor Francie Weinman Schwartz, coauthor of The Jewish Moral Virtues with Eugene B. Borowitz, has prepared this compendium to help you make decisions in advance and know what to do when the time comes. Due to safety concerns brought about by the current public health crisis, we’ve also included new traditions to consider.
While most of Morocco’s quarter of a million Jews emigrated to Israel, Europe and the U.S., 2,500 remain today. Traces of their deep-rooted culture stretch from the Mediterranean to the Sahara, a less-traveled region steeped in Jewish history.
Elisha Wiesel joins us on the fourth anniversary of his father’s passing to share stories and reflections on the lessons he learned from his dad, Holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel. Elisha is in conversation with Nadine Epstein, Moment editor-in-chief and editor of Elie Wiesel: An Extraordinary Life & Legacy. Moment is pleased to host this special zoominar to honor the memory of Elie Wiesel who co-founded the magazine 45 years ago with writer Leonard Fein.
For centuries, the Jewish calendar has unified the Jewish people. The dates of Jewish holidays have set common temporal landmarks for Jews, wherever they may live.
In his editor’s note in the May 1975 inaugural issue of Moment, Fein set out the magazine’s mandate “that Moment will help raise the sense of Jewish possibility, hence also raise Jewish aspirations.”
We asked our team of rabbis to weigh in.
We Jews are obsessed with history. From ancient to modern times, from the Flood to the Exodus to the destruction of the Temples and the exiles, from the Middle Ages to the Inquisition and the pogroms to the Holocaust to the establishment of the State of Israel, we recall and retell our history.
Esther Safran Foer, author of the recently released I Want You to Know We’re Still Here, shares her deeply moving story about her journey to learn more about her father’s family. It was not until Esther was an adult that she discovered her father had a previous wife and daughter, both killed in the Holocaust. Interviewed by her dear friend and former NPR All Things Considered host, Robert Siegel, Esther reveals how she became a detective and traveled the world in search of the family she never knew she had.
There are two important, but seemingly contradictory, takeaways from this laundry list of anti-Semitic incidents from May of 2020. First, we are experiencing a resurgence of extreme right anti-Semitic rhetoric in the United States. Second, don’t let anyone tell you that the danger from anti-Semitism in the United States (or most other countries) comes largely from the racist, xenophobic or white supremacist right. This past month the right-wing version of anti-Semitism was most ubiquitous. Next month it may very well be another manifestation of anti-Semitism that dominates the headlines. This disease shapeshifts over time and place, maximizing the damage it can inflict.
Aimee Ginsburg Bikel, Theo’s wife and director of the Theodore Bikel Legacy Project, gives us an up-close and personal look at the man behind the legend. Aimee shares stories about Theo’s life, from his acting roles to a sampling of his folk music, as well as his passion for tikkun olam (repair of the world). Aimee also presents an excerpt from her recently released book, Theodore Bikel’s: The City of Light, which recounts moments from Theo’s childhood in Vienna.