PODCAST: The COVID Seder

With Passover around the corner our minds are on the many preparations required to join our families around the Seder Table—and yet, who can forget the events of five years ago, when so many of us were isolated, locked-down, sheltering in place during that COVID Pesach of 2020.

We’re pleased to share this episode of R. Moshe Kurtz’s “Shu”t First, Ask Questions Later” podcast, examining the COVID Zoom Seder controversy. Kurtz is joined by R. Yehuda Halpert, who takes us back to the pandemic halakhic literature, identifies important topics that the Jewish world wrestled with during those unprecedented days, and shows how those questions are still resonant for Jewish practice in 2025.

Readers of TraditionOnline.org know Moshe Kurtz as the author of our “Unpacking the Iggerot” series, exploring the responsa of R. Moshe Feinstein zt”l. His “Shu’ t First, Ask Questions Later” podcast can be found on Spotify and all other platforms—search it out and subscribe now. It’s an engaging weekly discussion about response literature and fascinating halakhic curiosities; it has also hosted many of TRADITION’s regular authors.

Stay tuned! Yehuda Halpert will be returning to TraditionOnline right after Pesach as the guest editor of a series on COVID+5, in which rabbis, educators, mental health professionals, and communal leaders will share their takes on how the landscape has changed in the half-decade since the pandemic, what we got right and what we got wrong, and some of the enduring lessons and challenges of that time for the Jewish world.

Yehuda Halpert is Rabbi of Congregation Ahavat Shalom in Teaneck, NJ, and is an attorney and tax counsel at Debevoise & Plimpton, LLP.

Moshe Kurtz serves as the Assistant Rabbi of Agudath Sholom in Stamford, CT, and is the author of Challenging Assumptions.

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