Reflecting on new trends as the world begins to open
As we cautiously begin to emerge from the patterns of the past year, we wonder what our lives are going to be like going forward. We sense we are through the doldrums of last years’ lockdown and so we reflect on new trends as the world begins to open up. With safety protocols in place, the Bat Yam Temple of the Islands is proposing meeting at the sanctuary for services, masked and socially distanced, while still maintaining Zoom links for those not yet ready to physically join the congregation. We have learned about being connected in different ways and feeling linked while apart. The cohesiveness of the congregants does not rely on them being masked, socially distanced or participating from their homes via Zoom. Lockdown showed us how to work from anywhere — provided you have Internet, you have an office. Our immediate past president served his entire term without once being in the sanctuary for a service, proving it was possible to do what was needed.
More and more people are receiving vaccines reducing the risk for serious COVID-19 reactions, but we will never reach a zero no-risk level. We have always lived with risk; whenever we drive our cars or enter an airplane we are at risk. We accept that. In all aspects of our lives we are struggling to return to “normal,” having a drink with a friend, going for walks, meeting outdoors for meals, standing together at a service. The collective experience of a universal crisis has left us aware of the not-so-simple acts of meeting with family and friends.
A sense of futility and uncertainty alternates with a thirst for life. The post COVID-19 world has all the abundance and beauty it ever did have, waiting to be enjoyed. This life is our divine comedy, especially as now we have a deeper appreciation of Dante’s heaven and hell. Preparing this submission in April brings to mind Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales,” which describes April’s “sweet showers,” as well as T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land,” which begins, “April is the cruelest month.” Our lives offer options. Our Jewish traditions draw on resources learned in the Torah. We have learned we can experience a rebirth, a recovery. Rabbis and congregational boards are at work planning how best to reopen their shuls and temples, finding incremental ways to phase back into pre-pandemic situations. While they and their congregants come to their decisions, all decisions are defensible and should be received with compassion.