The Jewish Week 4-24-2020

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Will Gantz Ever Get to Be Israel’s Prime Minister?

New Face, from HIAS, at the Presidents Conference

Personal Rights, Public Health and the States

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Brisses Too Close for Comfort Amid Crisis?

SPECIAL REPORT

Inside the Murky World of Unkosher Torahs Why is the Museum of the Bible collecting unusable scrolls?

Conservative movement urges hospital procedures, but some mohels disagree. Stewart Ain Staff Writer

PAGE 13 A Torah scroll at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C.

How Teaneck Eased the Grip of Coronavirus

Rabbis and municipal leaders acted quickly to limit Covid-19’s spread in the hard-hit New Jersey township. Steve Lipman Staff Writer

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he rite of circumcision is the latest Jewish ritual to be upended by the coronavirus outbreak. The Conservative movement and some mohels are saying that because of the highly infectious nature of Covid-19, circumcision should be performed in the hospital shortly after birth, with a religious ceremony and procedure performed later. But the Orthodox and Reform movements, and other mohels, insist that a hospital circumcision is among the worst options — not only because of risk of exposure to the novel coronavirus, but because the later ceremony would require the ritual removal of a drop of blood, or hatafat dam brit.

The Coronavirus Crisis

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s the coronavirus rampaged through the Modern Orthodox community of Westchester County’s New Rochelle in early March, just 19 miles away in northern New Jersey two Jewish deputy mayors huddled with Bergen County

rabbis in a hastily called meeting. It was just after Purim in Teaneck. Elie Katz and Mark Schwartz were watching as the number of Covid-19 cases in their township, which includes a large Modern Orthodox community, spiked. They

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Obituaries

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Arts Guide

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Editor’s Column

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Sabbath

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Covid-19 is making the ritual circumcision evermore complicated. YONATAN SI N DEL/F L ASH90 “Why would you subject your child to two procedures if you could wait a little bit” and do it at home as the pace of new infections drops, asked Cantor Philip Sherman, a certified mohel from White Plains. “When I do a circumcision it takes 20 seconds. An experienced physician takes 7 to 10 minutes, the baby is strapped down to a board, and the parents aren’t allowed to be there. When I do it, it is quick,

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