“We should maintain course until we know something that is data-driven.” Israel has closed its borders and is closely tracking the infected.
Synagogues across the country are re-evaluating their plans for in-person High Holiday services as the Delta variant spreads.
As the world came to grips with the seriousness of the pandemic last spring, conspiracies arose linking COVID-19 and anti-Semitism.
For the past six weeks, members of Beth Sholom Congregation & Talmud Torah in Potomac, Maryland, have attended services in the parking lot.
Since the pandemic began, DeSantis has aped Trump’s responses–and non-responses–to the crisis. He has refused to take significant state action to stem the now-record rising tide of COVID-19. This has included intransigent resistance to mandating the use of masks, closing the beaches and ordering a stay-at-home lockdown. Echoing Trump, he deferred to local authorities to take such action.
Crowdsourcing has become a vital tool for many of the Jewish institutions attempting to record and preserve the community’s response to the pandemic.
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.
