In the biblical account, the walls of Jericho came tumbling down after Joshua commanded seven priests to blow their ram’s horns or shofars.

This year, it will take a lot more than seven priests for the plaintive wail of the shofar to penetrate the walls of Jews sheltering in place for the Jewish High Holy Days.

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Archie Gottesman, one of JewBelong’s principal founders, understands if her organization isn’t quite the right fit for someone. JewBelong’s “disclaimer” states: “JewBelong’s mission is to welcome people to Judaism with Jewish readings and rituals that many people can relate to. And guess what, JewBelong isn’t for everyone. This should not be shocking. Hell, Jews have a hard time agreeing on anything, you really think they are all going...

Normally Teresa Stanfield spends her days in prisons talking with inmates about how she changed the course of her troubled life, and how they can do the same. But the coronavirus has locked her on the outside.

“When COVID came and shut down programming, I was extremely disappointed,” said Stanfield, Oklahoma field director with Virginia-based Prison Fellowship. “But I also knew that God had a plan and we were going to do everything we could to continue to encourage our returning citizens and keep our volunteers connected.”

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For many Jews, a high point of services on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is the Unetaneh Tokef prayer, which wonders who will live and who will die in the year ahead.

This year, that question will take on added resonance, as the High Holidays fall six months into a global pandemic that has reshaped lives, battered institutions and killed hundreds of thousands of people, including many in Jewish communities.

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When the evacuation orders came Tuesday night, Guerneville resident Sonia Tubridy and her daughter packed the car and left, joining a caravan of vehicles fleeing the North Bay area and the fires that threatened to engulf them.

Tubridy, cultural director of the Russian River Jewish Community, was among the thousands of people ordered to evacuate from fires burning 46,000 acres across a vast area covering five counties and stretching from Vacaville north to Lake Berryessa and out to the Sonoma County coast. Dubbed the “LNU Lightning Complex” by Cal Fire, the danger zone has...

With the High Holidays fast approaching, Jewish congregations and communities are rethinking how to fulfill the commandment of hearing the shofar blown at a time when the COVID-19 crisis has scattered so many worshippers.

The loud blare of the shofar is meant to inspire awareness, inciting greater self-reflection and attention to God during the High Holiday season. Hearing the cry of the shofar is so closely tied to the fundamental purpose of Rosh Hashanah that the holiday is referred to as the day of shouting — “Yom Teruah” — in the Torah.

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Most local private schools, including Jewish schools, resume at the end of August. But this year is anything but normal. Principals and administrators have spent much of the summer ironing out multiple plans to return, whether in-person, online, or some combination of the two. That’s because no one knew whether kids would be back in school; in school but in smaller groups; in ‘pods’ as they are known; or ‘distance learning’ from home. 

As of press time, it was expected that all students in first through 12th grades would start the year at home. (Kindergarten students are...

In Montreal, the boxes will include apple or honey cake mix. In New Hampshire, they’ll include bird seed. And many synagogues will distribute apples and honey, the snack that symbolizes a sweet new year.

The packages are among many that will start to land soon on the front steps of Jewish homes: deliveries of prayer books, art supplies and gifts meant to make a High Holiday season spent at home a little less lonely and a little more spiritually fulfilling.

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Less than two miles away from the Center for Disease Control’s campus in Atlanta, where doctors and researchers prepare guidance for the nation’s coronavirus response, an Orthodox rabbi is preparing a different set of plans.

Rabbi Adam Starr’s task: how to accommodate hundreds of people for in-person services on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur during a pandemic.

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As the only Jew in his elementary school other than his brother, Eli Baldwin had his mom visit class to teach his peers about Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. From a young age, Marisa Swanson was instructed to lie about her Jewish faith if anyone in her small town asked. Before it was cool, Abby Craig used Zoom to attend the Jewish youth group that met in a temple three hours away from her home. 

About 1 million Jews live in small-town America, according to sociologist Matthew Boxer, Ph.D., of the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies at Brandeis University. One small...

Kamala Harris, tapped on Tuesday as Joe Biden’s running mate, attended services at both a Black Baptist church and a Hindu temple growing up – an interfaith background that reflects her historic status as the first Black woman and woman of South Asian descent on a major-party presidential ticket.

The 55-year-old first-term Democratic senator, whose name means “lotus” in the Sanskrit language, identifies as a Baptist as an adult and brought another faith into her life in 2014 when she married Douglas Emhoff, a Jewish attorney. Their wedding featured the breaking of a glass, a...

Masks are the new kippah, said Chavie Knapp, a mother who is giving out customized masks instead of yarmulkes at her daughter Sophie’s bat mitzvah.

“Masks have become the new normal,” said Knapp, whose daughter’s big day is planned for Labor Day weekend in Teaneck, N.J.

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