Helena Weinrauch, the girl with the blue Passover sweater

The Girl in the Blue Sweater: One Pandemic later

A year later, we speak every day, staying close during this pandemic. Helena, soon to turn 96, is quarantined alone inside her apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. It’s a home filled with memories. Photographs, books and artwork, much of it from her travels, cover walls and shelves. But her kitchen calendar, once abrim with engagements—lunches, dinners, concerts, plays—is now blank.

Continue reading

Milan Jewish Community United to Battle COVID-19

In the days leading up to the lockdown, the Milanese Jewish community behaved “like good soldiers,” Gadi Luzzatto Voghera, director of the Center of Contemporary Jewish Documentation (CDEC), tells Moment, respecting public health ordinances and avoiding scenes reminiscent of those coming out of Brooklyn and Bnei Brak of minyanim gone rogue.

Continue reading

Virtual (Holocaust) Yom Hashoah Keeps Holocaust Memory Alive

Virtual Yom Hashoah Keeps Victims’ Memory Alive

Today, before the sirens went off, hundreds of volunteers throughout Jerusalem placed a flag and a potted plant outside the doors of survivors, and as the sirens blared, they stood with them, but at the required six-foot distance, so that they would not be alone. And on-duty police officers called to survivors to come to their porches during the siren, and saluted them.

Continue reading

Ira Anti-Semitism Monitor

Moment Zoominar: The Unfortunate Convergence of Anti-Semitism and COVID-19 with Ira Forman

Ira N. Forman, Moment Institute’s Senior Fellow and former U.S. State Department’s Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism and Nadine Epstein, Moment Editor-in-Chief, discuss the impact of the coronavirus and anti-Semitism being seen around the world.

Continue reading

Israeli Comedian Gets Sick—and Makes Jokes

Unlike the rest of the country, the residents of the hotel aren’t in lock-down. Or at least, not within the hotel. “We can do whatever we want. We’ve arranged schedules for ourselves. We play games, we listen to music, we dance, we do yoga, I do standup, we hang out, some people pray. We eat a lot. “

Continue reading