COVID-19: Jewish news

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COVID-19

Biden’s new COVID adviser co-owns a popular DC ‘Jew-ish’ deli and bagel shop

Shira Hanau

(JTA)—Jeff Zients, a former Obama economic adviser and a leader of the Biden transition team, will lead the new administration’s COVID-19 response. Zients is well known for his work as director of the National Economic Council and acting director of the Office of Management and Budget during the Obama years.

Lesser known is his love of bagels and Jewish delis that led Zients to open a restaurant in Washington, D.C., in 2018 called Call Your Mother.

The deli, which operates in four locations in the capital as well as a number of local farmer’s markets, specializes in wood-fired bagels and, according to the restaurant’s website, “‘Jew-ish‘ deli favorites.” The menu includes an assortment of bagels, smoked salmon, whitefish salad and black and white cookies. There’s even a sandwich named for Rabbi Shira Stutman of Sixth & I, a large D.C. synagogue, that includes hummus, pickled red onions, tomatoes, cucumbers and sumac radishes on a zaatar bagel. David Lazarus MONTREAL (JTA)—A prominent Jewish nursing home in Montreal has seen dozens of residents and staffers infected by COVID19 amid the second wave of the pandemic to hit Quebec.

The virus has struck 40 residents and 22 staff members at the 600-bed Maimonides Geriatric Centre—the second highest number of cases among nursing homes in Quebec, according to data provided by the province.

The public facility, in the predominantly Jewish suburb of Cote St. Luc, is suffering from acute staff shortages, the English language daily The Gazette reported Tuesday, obliging family members and hired companions to pitch in.

The situation, similar to what occurred during the original onslaught of COVID19 in the spring, might be spiraling out of

Some of the recipe testing for the deli’s first location was done at Zients’ home, according to Washingtonian magazine. Zients was connected with Andrew Dana, the chef behind Call Your Mother and his business partner, through his father’s friend from summer camp.

“Similar to me, he’s from this area and spent a lot of time in New York and has experienced a lot of the great deli culture in New York and wanted D.C. to be able to replicate that,” Dana told the monthly.

According to the Washingtonian, Zients originally wanted to name the deli Apples and Honey.

In his role with the Biden administration, Zients will coordinate the administration’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic alongside Vivek Murthy, who served as U.S. surgeon general for the Obama administration, and Marcella Nunez-Smith, currently a co-chair of Biden’s COVID-19 advisory board.

During his years in the Obama administration, Zients helped to save the healthcare.

Montreal Jewish nursing home hit hard by COVID infections in 2nd wave

gov website after a glitchy rollout in 2013. control, some family members fear, according to The Gazette.

Residents’ families sent a letter with their concerns to Quebec Health Minister Christian Dube noting that the smaller staff is forced to move between “hot” and “cold” zones at Maimonides.

Joyce Shanks, whose 81-year-old father lives there, said that “more than 10% of the population is infected already and we are just at the beginning of the second wave.”

In a note sent last month to residents’ families, the facility confirmed that four residents have died and 50 have been infected since the second wave began, including seven that have since recovered.

In the spring, Maimonides also had one of the highest levels of COVID infections among nursing homes in Quebec.

The province’s regional Integrated Health and Social Services University Network oversees the facility.

COVID-19

In an echo of the spring, large crowds gather for Hasidic rabbi’s funeral in Brooklyn

Shira Hanau

(JTA)—Large crowds gathered Monday, Dec. 7 for the funeral of a beloved Hasidic rabbi in Williamsburg, home to the Satmar Hasidic community in Brooklyn.

Thousands gathered at the funeral, according to the New York Post, and most did not wear masks.

The funeral took place at the same synagogue where a massive wedding expected to draw thousands was planned and then stopped by state authorities in October. Another massive Satmar wedding was held at a different location in Williamsburg the next month, though that event was kept secret until weeks afterwards when a Hasidic newspaper wrote about the planning that made it possible to pull off without detection.

The man who died, Rabbi Yisroel Chaim Menashe Friedman, was a longtime judge of the Satmar rabbinic court and a respected authority on Jewish law. He was considered one of the most important figures in the Satmar faction Ron Kampeas WASHINGTON (JTA)—A Jewish doctor from Boston on the front line of that city’s coronavirus response is President-elect Joe Biden’s choice to helm the Centers for Disease Control.

Rochelle Walensky, the chief of infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital and a professor at Harvard Medical School, was among the members of the new government health care team announced in a statement.

The Biden transition team said Walensky is a “leading expert on virus testing, prevention, and treatment.”

Walensky, a member of Temple Emanuel in Newton, told Boston’s Jewish Journal in April that she was seeking led by Rabbi Zalman Teitelbaum in Williamsburg. He was 94.

The previous day, Teitelbaum spoke to a different gathering, a celebration of the 21st of Kislev, the day that Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum, Zalman’s father, fled the Nazis on the Kasztner train in 1944. There, he told followers that they should not consider themselves Americans, according to the Jerusalem Post.

Funerals for community leaders of that stature in Orthodox communities often draw thousands of mourners. Earlier in the pandemic, a large funeral for a Hasidic rabbi in Williamsburg drew thousands to the street, provoking a tweet from New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio that called out “the Jewish community.”

The tweet was widely criticized among New York Jews but not the Williamsburg community itself. Leaders of the two main synagogues in the Satmar community in Williamsburg wrote letters at the time defending the mayor from charges of anti-Semitism. One of those leaders, Mayer Rispler, himself died of the corona-

Biden names Dr. Rochelle Walensky, a leader of Boston’s pandemic team, to head CDC

virus in October. solace in her Jewish community as she faced down the disease.

“I said to them, the last time I spoke with them, ‘I’m thinking I need you more than you need me,’” Walensky said. “I have a sense it’s getting emotionally pretty hard. I certainly have everybody’s cell phone number … I may need to use it in the weeks ahead.”

Biden’s rollout was notable for the number of positions he is tying to battle the COVID. Biden campaigned on incumbent President Donald Trump’s failure to stem the pandemic’s spread.

Also named as coordinator of the COVID-19 Response and Counselor to the President is Jeff Zients, an economist who owns a chain of Jewish delis in Washington, D.C.