The light and the dark of COVID
For sure the disruption to life as we know it..
The lock down on a sunny cold December morning
The eerie quiet on the streets of Jerusalem
Feeling like Shabbat
But not…
The wind makes itself felt
On the cheeks
Making the sun even more friendly and healing than usual.
This year represents a fracture from the usual
The way we do things
The way we interact with one another
A reset button has been pushed
Not of our own making
For many the niceties of social interaction
The inability to go to each other’s homes
And make polite conversation
Has been a blessing
What wonderful excuses we now have
Not to meet unwelcome relatives
On holidays
And for those of us who felt discomfort
With the community of worshippers
With little choice in shuls
This blessed COVID came none too soon
For here was our out
At least for those of us at high risk
And Shabbes became an island of private sanity
Where the Schechina wafts through the soul
With its own rhythm and cadences
And the midrashic imagination has fertile soil
To soar and dive
To feel the light and the darkness of the divine.
Economies have tanked
Things just stopped
Commerce, shops, service industries-
Hitting the poor of course-, disproportionately
The traffic on the highways has thinned
And it’s as if the frenetic commercial drive
and greed has been checked by this invisible
Bug, this virus, this corona shaped
beautiful coral colored spiked circular image.
As if, mother earth and her tiny messengers
have brought the massive economies and greedy
multinationals to their knees with one tiny microbe
infecting without regard to GDP.
More importantly its effect on relationships
The masking of the face
The absent cues and facial gestures
That signify emotions
Reducing communication now to voice only
And the eyebrows.
Even more importantly
The sensation of touch has been severely curtailed
Allowing for an atrophy of this faculty
No more the hug of a fellow congregant
(Shlez always said shaking hands was goyish!
“A yid needs to give another a hug!”)
No more the compassionate hug of a patient
I recently diagnosed with an incurable illness
No more the furtive hug of another woman disguised as friendship
Maybe the loss of touch the most damaging of all.
Watching David Attenborough’s images of nurturing mammals
The gentility of mothers stroking their furry young
Ingrained in our paleo brains
In our genetic imprint
The need for the mother’s touch
The stroke on the cheek
The reassuring hug around the neck
Things we starve for,
Beyond survival
Flight or fright
That maternal reassurance
Forestalling the existential nightmare of what is in store
Now or eventually
That darkness and eventual ayin….
Her loving touch that will be mirrored in every touch henceforth
And in her wake
Every touch of a woman
Now lost in the official rules of COVID engagement
Governed by rule of law
Just like Halachah
Where the rules overtake the heart
And the law is an ass
No chance for that archetypal connection
That replays the lost mother
Now the secular government has joined your halachic framers
In an unholy alliance
To forbid this need
This alone has done more damage than all others.
