A Bitter Anniversary

 

Yesterday was a bitter anniversary. On March 11, 2020 the World Health Organization (WHO) officially declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic. Nothing has been the same since.
 
Today also marks a bitter anniversary. March 12, 2020 was the day that our synagogue, like every other synagogue in Northern New Jersey announced that it was closing indefinitely.   What is strange and difficult year it has been. 

You know the statistics. As of yesterday, over 530,000 Americans have died as a result of the COVID-19 virus. There have been 29,300,000 cases throughout the nation.  These numbers include our neighbors and friends, our relatives, and members of the synagogue family and community.  During this year, we have seen tremendous examples of courage, compassion, and generosity exhibited at all levels of society.   Yet at the same time, the pandemic has highlighted so many of the rifts in American society that have we ignored for years, yet can be ignored no longer. Like a bright shining light, the pandemic has made us confront the ugly side of American life.  It has forced every American to reckon with the fact that too many people live in inadequate housing.  Too many communities lack the medical and healthcare facilities to provide a reasonable standard of care for those they serve. Too many essential workers are neither compensated reasonably, nor receive the respect that they deserve, and that other Americans regularly enjoy. The gap between haves and have-nots, the disparities in health, wealth, and educational opportunities between various racial and ethnic communities have been exposed like never before.  Whether we are Democrats or Republicans, liberals or conservatives, we cannot deny the inequity that the pandemic has revealed, or the dangers that these disparities actually pose to our American future. Yet even as we confront these truths, we must recognize that our political divisions have prevented us from finding reasonable solutions.

 

On this bitter anniversary, we may take a lesson from Jewish history. At times when we gather to recall bitter moments from our past, our Rabbis challenge us to consider our own role in the creation of the conditions that led to our downfall. The classic example is the observance of Tisha b’Av, the saddest day of the Jewish year and the approach of our Rabbis to the destruction of the First and Second Temples.  Our rabbis certainly understood the violence of the Babylonians and the Romans. Yet they also challenged us to think about what our own responsibilities were, and they suggest that we consider our moral failings and the baseless hatred among the Jewish people that also contributed to our misfortune. The Rabbis challenged us to not only understand the external factors, but also the internal factors, those we have control over so that we might better understand how we reached this difficult moment, and what we need to do to extricate ourselves from it.

 

We know about the virology of COVID-19 and learn more every day. But even as we depend on scientists and health professionals to address the external factors of COVID-19, every American must consider our own role in creating the conditions that have allowed the many pathologies in our society to go unchecked, and what we must do to improve the lives of every American now.

And as the great Sage Hillel taught, if not now, when?

 

Shabbat Shalom