It was the 1980s. I was a teenager, and the spread of a different contagion threatened to overturn our way of life: genital herpes.Fear of this new sexually transmitted disease led social commentators to ponder whether a new age of chivalry awaited us...

The world has been changing drastically. This pandemic has forced us to rethink our values because it threatens our way of life. To many people, this ordeal has brought adversity, pain and sorrow. To me, however, this virus feels a lifetime away.I live...

When the COVID-19 pandemic began, 15-year-old Samantha Renzulli immediately thought about how it would affect her elderly friends at Jewish Senior Services, a long-term care facility in Bridgeport, Conn.Renzulli had met some of the residents through Better...

In the space of just 48 hours, Orthodox lawmakers in New York have gone from calling on the city’s mayor to open playgrounds, to threatening to open the parks themselves, to actually cutting the chains off a Brooklyn playground.State Assemblyman Simcha...

According to the Torah, Moses was 80 years old when he led the Israelites through the 40-year Exodus out of Egypt to the edge of the Promised Land.  Now I am 80 years old and while I would not try to compare myself to Moses, our Greatest Prophet who...

My stepdaughter Megan often chronicles her thoughts, ideas, art projects, fashion statements, dating conundrums and other intricacies of her 34-year-old life on Instagram to entertain family and friends. A month or so ago (who can keep track of time anymore?),...

D’var Torah:  Parashat EMORAdonai said to Moses: Speak to the priests, the sons of Aaron, and say to them: None shall become ritually impure for any [dead] person among their kin, except for the relatives that are closest to them: their mother, their...

To help people cope during this time of social distancing, Jan Nykin, a licensed clinical social worker, suggests that people could “say a morning prayer such as Modeh Ani or the Shema or words of prayer from your heart.”Nykin and Sylvia Nissenboim,...

Imagine that a disease breaks out in the community, actually a family of diseases, perhaps, because it presents differently in many cases. No one knows exactly how it is transmitted, and no one knows who patient zero is. Worst of all, no one knows exactly...

I did not grow up with seders.By the time I became a Jew by choice, I was in my fifties.  I had been to a few seders, hosted by friends whose children and grandchildren turned them into raucous affairs.  I also attended one seder that was conducted...

Passover is a cherished Jewish holiday that celebrates our journey from the bitterness of slavery to the sweetness of freedom, a paradoxical theme amidst the plague of COVID-19. During this global pandemic, we are socially distant and socially isolated,...

Editor’s note: This column by Dr. James Hinrichs was made possible thanks to the generosity of Dr. Jonathan Root, Dr. Norman Druck and Galia Movitz. I was asked by Jewish Light to host a column on the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.  I am board certified...