(JTA) — One year after COVID-19 first walloped Jewish communities in the United States, a scientific study has confirmed something that many in the communities have long believed: gatherings during the week of Purim served as super-spreader events.

A paper published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association Network Open, a peer-review journal that is open to the public, concludes that the coronavirus was spreading widely in Orthodox communities across the country last spring around that Jewish holiday — before public health warnings were given about the dangers of lar...