G-d’s Time Machine, by Way of a Modern Laptop

“Technology is not here simply to provide utility. It is also meant as a springboard to wonder, allowing us to conceive our reality in ways previously unimaginable. “Technology provides an ever-expanding bank of metaphor to crystallize the most abstract ideas into tangible form. “Don’t think that this is a mere side benefit of technology. On […]

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Why I Won’t Be Passing Over Passover This Year

The dam finally burst! For a while, there was an ongoing existential shift, beginning with the tightening in my chest as the days wore on, and the news reports grew more and more grim. But today was different. Today, I got a text from my daughter that the father of her very close friend had […]

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4 Thoughts to Help You When You Lose Your Job

Dear Rachel, I’ve been unemployed for a couple of months. I collected severance pay, but not much, so my finances are strained. I feel rather depressed. I’m not doing anything important and have not yet found another job. But most of all, I miss having a sense of purpose and identity. Got the Unemployment Blues […]

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Chabad serves community virtually during corona crises

Due to the coronavirus, synagogues, like all places of gathering, have temporarily closed their doors. But Chabad does not see it as closing doors, but rather as opening new ones. “Hundreds of new synagogues have opened in Orange County,” said Rabbi Pesach Burston, director of Chabad in Orange County. “These synagogues have ‘opened’ in the […]

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Thousands of Binghamton students and alumni join virtually for Shabbat dinner

Shabbat 2020, an iconic program run each year at Binghamton University in New York State and conceived by the Rohr Chabad Center for Jewish Student Life at Binghamton University, was expected to bring together as many as 2,000 students, alumni, family members and faculty for Shabbat dinner and prayers this past Friday night—and it did, […]

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Houses of worship, forced to close due to COVID-19, get inventive because people need prayer, they say

For the last 15 years, only the occasional blizzard shuttered the 24/7 perpetual adoration chapel at St. Paul of the Cross Catholic Church in Park Ridge. But then COVID-19 struck. The quiet chapel, where volunteers normally offer up prayers day and night before the consecrated host that Catholics believe is the body of Christ, is […]

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In Brooklyn’s Hasidic Jewish community, a socially distant wedding

As soon as a run-of-the-mill soundtrack to New York’s streets, automobiles honking their horns is a method to throw a socially distanced wedding ceremony reception within the time of the coronavirus outbreak. On the eve of a ban on all gatherings within the state battling the fast-spreading COVID-19, a handful of individuals gathered for a […]

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How Coronavirus Hit New York’s Orthodox Jews

The rampant spread of COVID-19 continues to skyrocket, and nowhere in the U.S. has been more affected than New York, the state with the most cases. As of press time, the state had recorded 15,800 positive cases —  nearly 50% of the national total. To put this in perspective, New York’s total is now more […]

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