One Year Later

Last Friday, Erev Shabbat Parshat Ki Tisa, I got a call from Dr. Roni Raab, Executive Director of the South Florida office of JNF. Last year, our annual JNF Partnership Weekend was supposed to take place on Parshat Ki Tisa. Early reports were already reaching us about the danger and spread of a novel coronavirus, and some shuls in the Northeast had already shut down. However in Florida no such actions had been taken- yet. The previous week our planned speaker from Israel cancelled. Earlier that week we decided that there would be no JNF-sponsored Gala Kiddush on Shabbat, out of an abundance of caution. However, the communal Friday night dinner was still scheduled to occur. When we made the decision to shut down our shul on Friday afternoon, I immediately called Roni to let him know. Roni responded that he fully supported the decision, but there were around 100 people who had signed up for Shabbat dinner and we needed to take care of them. Roni immediately called the caterer, sourced hundreds of disposable To-Go containers, contacted everyone signed up for dinner, and set up what can only be described as a makeshift emergency Shabbat food distribution site in the shul parking lot. In was that moment as I watched our members and JNF friends receive their elegant catered dinners to go- from the back of a catering truck in our parking lot- that I knew that the virus was very quickly creating drastic changes to our world. Roni called me on the first anniversary of that event to tell me that our shul and JNF (and he and I) will always share a special bond as a result of that event.

This Shabbat Parshat HaChodesh, March 13^th, marks the 1 year anniversary on the secular calendar of when our shul shut down due to CoVID. It is an appropriate moment to reflect on how much has changed and how much we have lost in the past year. Our Rabbis teach that a person begins to forget after a year. Some explain that this is why there is a mitzvah to hear Parshat Zachor once a year. After 12 months we begin to forget, and we need to be reminded. This is also why the longest period of mourning, for a parent, concludes after 12 months. The surviving child will continue to mourn, but our Rabbis understood that the perspective of that mourning begins to shift after a year. Even after 12 months, there is no forgetting about this pandemic era. We are still suffering from its impact. People are still getting sick, hospitalized and dying. Nonetheless as we reach the 1 year anniversary, it is an appropriate time to broaden our perspective. In addition to anxiety or depression or sadness that we may still be feeling, we should also embrace feelings of strength and resilience, gratitude and hope.

With the availability of three highly effective vaccines, perhaps it is feelings of hope and optimism that we should especially cultivate as we enter a second year of the pandemic. The CDC has issued new guidelines about how vaccinated people can begin socializing with others who are vaccinated, or even with a pod of low risk unvaccinated people, without masks or distancing. These changes do not yet impact our guidelines on the shul campus, but we are carefully following the updates and guidance, and we are optimistic that it will soon be safe to take additional steps towards “returning to normal”.

Let us not kid ourselves into thinking that a return to normal, as much as we want it, will be so easy for us to embrace. Dr. Lucy McBride wrote an op-ed this week (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/03/09/weve-adjusted-pandemic-life-now-we-face-anxiety-leaving-it-behind/) in which she suggests that many will struggle with FON: Fear of Normal. As she writes,

“Now that we’ve adjusted to pandemic life- with its inherent struggles, stress, social isolation, emotional toll and hidden silver linings- it’s understandable to experience emotional whiplash even as trauma recedes. I see it in my office every day. From specific worry about being infected with the coronavirus to generalized anxiety about resuming normal activities, pondering our future can generate ambivalence and even outright fear.”

Many have wondered why the Jewish People seem so ambivalent and anxious about leaving Egyptian bondage, to point that some sabotage their Exodus and many never leave. As the pandemic recedes, I have a better understanding: Just as it was easier to take the Jews out of Egypt than it was to take the Egypt out of the Jews; so too it may very well be easier to remove the pandemic from among us than it will be to remove the pandemic from within us.

Let us acknowledge this Fear of the Normal. Let us support each other in this stage of the pandemic, just as we have done during the past 12 months. With Hashem’s help the upcoming month of Nissan will be one in which we celebrate an Exodus from darkness to light and from despair to hope; in those days and in our time.