By an avel
I recently got up from Shiva for another of Corona’s victims and immediately sat down to write this short article in the hope that my family’s experience using Zoom for the Shiva will help others during this unfortunate time. May it never be necessary, but should someone have to sit Shiva, the lessons we learned from our experience may prove very helpful to Matzav.com readers.

By Rabbi Pinchos Lipschutz
Our people have not experienced as difficult a period as we are living through now since the awful days of the Holocaust. We have not lost as many good people in as concentrated a time since then. Over the past few weeks, every day has brought fresh deaths and more news of people dying. People of all ages, young and old. People were hale and productive one day and the next day they were dead and buried.
Whose heart cannot be broken?
Who can go through day after day without fear and dread?
Our lives have been turned upside down. Many of the things we took for granted have been taken from us. We are basically confined to our homes, unable to go anywhere.

Dear Matzav,
I only have a few minutes to write because I have to get back to coordinating my kids’ numerous school teleconferences and printing out all their school sheets, which has become a full-time job.
I want to first thank all the amazing rabbeim and teachers who are so devoted during this shutdown. What they are doing is mamish amazing. These people are angels.
But we, parents, are not.
We are at our breaking point.
If you are lucky to have 5 children, the current system means five teleconferences every morning, plus some additional ones now that they started doing English, too.

By Rafael Medoff
Matzav.com

How many tries will it take before President Trump’s speechwriters finally get it right on the Holocaust?

Three years ago, they issued a Holocaust commemoration statement that didn’t mention Jews. This week, they flubbed again, but in a different way.

The president’s 2020 Holocaust Remembrance declaration described the Holocaust as “the horrific atrocities committed by the Nazi regime against minority groups and other ‘undesirables’,” and characterized the victims of the Holocaust as “those of Jewish, Polish, and Slavic ancestry, Roma and Sinti [Gypsies], individuals with mental and physical disabilities, gays, political dissidents, and dozens of other groups.”

Wrong, and wrong again.

By Rafael Medoff
Seventy-five years after President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s controversial embrace of the king of Saudi Arabia, FDR’s grandson has become part of a Saudi-financed public relations campaign to celebrate his late grandfather’s pro-Saudi policies.
Hall Delano Roosevelt has been working with the LS2 Group, an Iowa-based public relations firm, to draw attention to the recent 75th anniversary of FDR’s meeting with King Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud, according to documents released by the Arab-American news site Al-Monitor. In the LST Group’s Foreign Agents Registration filings last year, it stated that it is paid $126,500 monthly by the Saudi Embassy in Washington to provide “public relations and media management services.”

By Moshe Phillips
President Trump’s decision to send millions of dollars in aid to the Palestinian Authority is a grave mistake. Although motivated by humanitarian sentiment, the aid package will serve a very different purpose—it will free up funds for the PA to continue paying salaries to terrorists.
The reason that the United States cut off economic aid to the PA in the first place was precisely because providing that aid allowed the PA to maintain its policy of paying more than $134-million to imprisoned terrorists and to the families of dead and released terrorists.

Israel, like most western countries afflicted with the coronavirus, is now groping toward a partial exit strategy from the severe government measures imposed on the public. Only the debate there is more fraught because of the growing disparity between the economic toll and that inflicted by the virus itself.

25 Nissan 5780 / April 19, 2020
To all members of our Lakewood kehillah,
COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, has led to disruption of life and to terrible illness and death in our community. The most vulnerable group of patients are those over 60, but some young adults have been severely affected as well. There have been close to 50 deaths from our community and we still have tens of patients on ventilators in the intensive care units at area hospitals.

As much as we want to come out of these restrictions of social distancing, we have to be aware that the virus is still spreading and causing new infections. If we let down our guard we may, chas ve’shalom, see an increase in new cases and deaths.

By Echad Min Hachaburah, Lakewood, NJ
I never in my life thought I would have to write something like this. The Lakewood Tzibur and its Torah manhigim are people who shouldn’t need someone to rise to the occasion to defend. Unfortunately, like many things these days, the circumstances demand something so abnormal.
We are living in incredible times. Times that fit every description Chazal gave of the Ikvesa D’Meshicha, as enumerated on Sotah Daf Mem Tes Amud Bais. Hopefully, we can capitalize on this unique moment, doing our part to bring Moshiach, by engaging in teshuvah mu’etes – each one of us in our own way as we are instructed by our rabbeim.

By Mya Guarnieri
From Rick DeSantis, the Republican governor of my home state of Florida, to President Donald Trump, to the Instagram messages of Harry and Meghan, the duke and duchess of Sussex, to “Wonder Woman” star Gal Gadot, to some of my upper-middle class friends on Facebook, it’s become the catchphrase and sentiment of our moment, a reminder that the coronavirus is a great equalizer, a symbol of our shared humanity: We’re all in this together.
Only we’re not.