PODCAST: COVID+5 Panel Discussion

Readers of TraditionOnline.org have been following our week-long series COVID+5,where we’ve been exploring the lasting impact of the pandemic on Jewish education, communal life, and spirituality. Through the insights and reflections of a diverse group of authors we’ve considered how COVID reshaped our synagogues, our communal celebrations, our Yeshiva high school and elementary schools, and our relationship with God and each other. In this episode of our podcast, the guest editor of that series, R. Yehuda Halpert, conducts a reflective conversation on the changes that have occurred in this past half-decade in our religious and educational institutions, communal trust, as well as the emotional and spiritual struggles experienced by individuals during the pandemic. He talks with the six authors in the series, all of whom draw on their experiences as mental health professionals, educators, administrators, and spiritual leaders to look back on the Spring of 2020, and to consider where we’re holding now.

Read the series introduction and all the columns here.

In the first segment of this episode we hear from Gila Muskin Block, executive director and co-founder Yesh Tikva, an organization dedicated to working with couples navigating the challenges of infertility, and Dr. Carl Hochhauser a pediatric psychologist who is also on the counselling and teaching staff at Yeshivat HaKotel. Together they focus on the emotional and spiritual struggles experienced by individuals during the pandemic.

The episode then transitions from the individual to the communal, focusing on our schools, synagogues, and the broader Jewish community, as we’re joined by Rabbis Josh Kahn (Torah Academy of Bergen County), Daniel Korobkin (BAYT, Toronto), Leonard Matanky (Congregation K.I.N.S. of West Rogers Park, and Dean of Ida Crown Jewish Academy) and Larry Rothwachs (Beth Aaron, Teaneck). The participants revisit aspects of the COVID pandemic and its post-pandemic consequences all the while challenging and sharpening each other’s formulations and conclusions.

Watch a video recording of the conversations.

TRADITION thanks Yehuda Halpert for initiating this project. Explore more on these themes in his recent book, Speaking to an Empty Shul: Timeless Lessons from Unprecedented Times, a rabbinic diary describing his time leading Cong. Ahavat Shalom in Teaneck throughout the pandemic years.