United Airlines yesterday renewed its flights between San Francisco and Tel Aviv. The route between San Francisco International Airport and Ben-Gurion Airport in Israel will return to its regular schedule of three flights a week, the Jerusalem Post reported.
Despite the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, United Airlines was one of the few airlines that continued flights to Israel, operating a daily route to Newark Liberty International Airport.
Italian Jews this week celebrated their community’s first wedding since the country’s synagogues, along with many other institutions, were shut down due to the coronavirus, JTA reports. Marco Del Monte, a Rome-born chef who is studying for a master’s degree in psychology, married Elinor Hanoka, a sixth-year medical student from Israel, while wearing face masks at the Great Synagogue of Rome.
The couple had planned to marry in Jerusalem in March, but Italy and Israel went into lockdown.
The bride’s parents were unable to attend, Dror Eydar, Israel’s ambassador to Italy, wrote on Facebook. Eydar has known the groom for several years. His parents were able to attend, along with a handful of guests and Rabbi Menachem Lazar of Rome’s Chabad Piazza Bologna synagogue, who officiated.
“Great joy, albeit not in the cities of Judea and in the streets of Jerusalem, as had been planned, but in Rome,” Eydar wrote on Facebook, paraphrasing from the text of Sheva Brachot – seven blessings that are recited during Jewish weddings.
The October-November trips of Israeli high school delegations to Poland will be postponed, and likely cancelled, the Jewish Press reports. A total of 17,582 11th and 12th graders in 145 delegations have enrolled in these trips.
The Ministries of Education and Health determined that “it is not possible to plan a reliable and structured departure in time for the fall,” according to the education ministry. “Therefore, the ministry elected to announce the postponement/cancellation early to avoid financial repercussions.”
Israel
Israel’s Public Transport Operators’ Forum, which represents seven privatized bus companies, has warned the Transportation Ministry of the companies’ imminent collapse due to financial losses caused by the coronavirus crisis and the lack of governmental assistance to the beleaguered companies, according to Yeshiva World News.
The forum wrote a letter to Transportation Minister Miri Regev on Monday stating that they will have to switch to “survival mode” in ten days if they don’t receive financial assistance, warning that it will lead to “paralysis of the economy” since millions of Israelis, including Israeli soldiers, would have no way of traveling to work or their army bases, especially from the periphery of the country.
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“‘We’ve been milling our heads off’: For some small kosher food purveyors, the coronavirus era is boom time.” “Migrash Farm saw its fortunes rebound almost as quickly as they had sunk. By the middle of the month, the farm’s lost orders had been made up more than twofold as retail customers rushed to buy up dry goods wherever they could.”
Satire from Oy Vey Magazine. Do Ashkenazic Jews fail to recognize a symptom of Covid-19, because their food has been “tasteless for years”? Sabrina Miller “investigates.”
Streaming
The Jewish Council for Public Affairs will sponsor a webinar on White Nationalism, Racism and Antisemitism in America Today on Wednesday at noon. It will feature Amy Spitalnick , executive director of Integrity First for America; and Eric Ward, executive director of the Western States Center.
A Physicians for Human Rights webinar on Wednesday at 11 p.m. will discuss Israel and the Virus – Opportunities and Challenges.
The Holocaust Memorial & Tolerance Center of Nassau County will sponsor a webinar on Global Jewish Citizenship During a 21st Century Pandemic on Wednesday at 1 p.m.
Chava Shervington of the Jewish Multiracial Network and Yoshi Silverstein of the Mitsui Collective will join David Bryfman of the Jewish Education Project for an online conversation about Race and Racism in Jewish Education on Wednesday at 2 p.m.
The American Technion Society will sponsor a webinar on Sleep and Dreams During the Coronavirus Pandemic on Wednesday at noon.
Sharsheret will sponsor a webinar about being a parent with cancer during the time of Covid-19 on Thursday at 1 p.m. This webinar is led by Dr. Kenneth Tercyak, a pediatric psychologist and prevention researcher at Georgetown University’s Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, and Dr. Julie Lewis, a clinical psychologist in private practice in Washington who specializes in anxiety and mood disorders in children, adolescents, and adults.
A series of Kids in the Kitchen online classes sponsored by the Chabad-Lubavitch chasidic movement on Wednesdays this month at 3:30 p.m. will offer children the opportunity to get some hands-on “Heimish” cooking experience. It is geared to children ages 3-10.
Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, professor emerita of Performance Studies at New York University and Chief Curator of the Core Exhibition at the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw, will take part in an online conversation on June 17 at 2 p.m. about “the resilience of Jewish museums in these uncertain times and POLIN Museum’s creative responses to the crisis and its aftermath.” Her partner will be Zygmunt Stępiński, director of the museum.
The Greater Westchester Jewish Community will hold an online county-wide memorial service on the theme “Walking in the Shadow: Healing Together,” on June 18 at 7 p.m.
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