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THIS WEEK'S EDITION: April 17, 2020

Dear Readers,

As much of the world enters its second month of shutdown because of the novel coronavirus, the days seem to blend together; when my husband asked on Monday if I'd just forgotten to take out the trash, I realized I'd actually forgotten it was Monday.

For Laura Zinn Fromm, an author and writing teacher who lives in New Jersey, every day feels like Shabbat, with long walks and leisurely dinners. Laura's essay exploring that theme is one of more than a dozen we've published in recent days on Scribe, our platform for community voices. We recently decided to revive Scribe because we see across our communities an explosion of powerful expression about the pandemic. It's filled with first-person essays about this crazy mosaic of experiences and emotions we're all living through -- Zoom synagogue services and of course Zoom seders; the surprise of missing the morning commute; a new prayer for putting on a face mask.

These and a few other stories are collected in a PDF that you can download and print via the button above, to savor throughout Shabbat and Sunday, and share with your friends. And if you or someone you know has a story -- or artwork, or video -- for Scribe, please send it to [email protected].

And we’ve also been hosting a series of lively dialogues via Zoom with Jewish leaders on the critical issues of the day. Please join us next week for two great discussions: on Tuesday at noon ET, our Opinion editor, Batya Ungar-Sargon, will host a debate with two of our columnists on anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, and Wednesday at 2 p.m. ET I’ll moderate a conversation about the crisis in Jewish journalism featuring Ben Smith of The New York Times, Andres Spoikony of The Jewish Funders Network, Brandeis Prof. Jonathan Sarna and Sue Fishkoff of the J Weekly in San Francisco. See you there!

Shabbat shalom, and thanks for reading the Forward.

Jodi
Jodi Rudoren
Editor-in-Chief, The Forward
[email protected]; Twitter: @rudoren

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