Our Journal of Love and Darkness

Our Journal of Love and Darkness: A BJ Community Writing Project Shavuot 5781

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Edited by Abigail Katz and Sian Gibby

Artwork by Sonia Gordon-Walinsky

It is our hope that the worst of the pandemic is behind us. As befits our Jewish heritage, we pause to reflect on the past difficult year with gratitude, taking note of the things and people that sustained us through a painful, frightening time.

We named this collective writing project with a nod to Amos Oz’s beautiful novel, A Tale of Love and Darkness, about the birth of the State of Israel in acknowledgement that times of darkness often contain sparks of light if we look for them, and that love always illuminates the pathway forward.

Thank you to everyone who responded so warmly to this invitation to share your experiences of the past 13+ months. May we remember everything we’ve learned over this period and take the wisdom with us into a better and more compassionate future.

— Abigail Katz and Sian Gibby Co-Chairs of the Community Writing Project

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Our Journal of Love and Darkness: A BJ Community Writing Project

Lost Memories But So Much to Remember Rachel Weiss | May 2020 The year was 2020.

The year with perfect vision. The year we would all see so clearly. Well, we did see.

Festivities were canceled, but we danced and we sang.

Graduations were silenced, but we passed.

Birthdays were driven by, but we celebrated.

Babies were delivered and swept away, but we rejoiced.

Schools were closed, but we learned.

Restaurants were abandoned, but we ate.

Errand runs were halted, but we improvised.

The year was 2020.

The year with perfect vision. The year we would all see so clearly. Well, we did see.

Commemorations filled with love and appreciation.

Children moving into phases for the future so well prepared and humbled.

Milestones cherished for their honor.

Newborns blessed with new beginnings.

Students, teachers, and parents working together to educate those most important to us.

Delicious dishes served with an appreciation for their taste and the efforts that went into preparing them. Visits to our favorite places bearing a smile and an extra few minutes to say, “Thank you,” to those working for our benefit.

The year was 2020.

The year with perfect vision. The year we would all see so clearly. Well, we did see.

Virtual weddings and proms, where the music played and we celebrated with those we love most.

Home visit graduations, where principals offered genuine and personal words of praise and encouragement to those moving on to new unexplored paths.

Celebrations were reveled in with family and friends where they were the most important part.

Births were drenched in blessings and consumed with more love, affection, and hope than anyone thought us capable of.

Education was valued and realized as a shared venture with educators, families, and friends, all teaching us life’s lessons.

Togetherness to have a sip of wine, taste a delicacy, or eat just plain old comfort food was enjoyed simply because of the company.

Purchases that served others as much as they served ourselves; the clerk, the sheltered, the driver.

The year was 2020.

The year with perfect vision. The year we would all see so clearly. Well, I hope we all did see.

There is beauty in hardship.

There is camaraderie in pain.

There is creativity in hopelessness.

There is love in this world.

Our eyes have been opened to the world of possibilities.

Perfect vision isn’t necessary, you just need to take the time to look.

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Our Journal of Love and Darkness: A BJ Community Writing Project

Pandemic as Liminal Space Robin Reif Given its assault on life, livelihood, and our collective psyche, the pandemic easily qualifies as “the worst of times.” Still, as humans and certainly as Jews we seem compelled to seek meaning, to extract shape from the shambles.

For me, that’s meant treating this time as a kind of liminal space between what’s past and what’s to come, a time to set down the burdens of social and professional striving, gather energies, reflect, and reorient myself to a future that seeks to improve upon my past.

Before, I was juggling too much—clients, household, child, partner. Then, last March, a halt. Consulting work fell off. My partner was in another state. Outside was threat and death but also wild applause and daily Shofar blasts for essential workers. Inside it was still. In the enforced lull, I began to hear something I’d missed in my driven years of single motherhood and full-time work: Silence.

Attuning my ears to its manifold textures—now a circular hum, now an unpunctuated buzz—it was, at best, sublime, like note-less music. It hit me how much of my life has been spent projecting my own voice. OK, I’m a big talker, often intent on making the stronger argument, persuading as much out of righteous conviction as ego, thriving in a word-driven business. I also began to wonder whether my habitual breathless rhythms had been a kind of evasion, an effort to turn from the truth of aging, transition, and loss.

This quiet made me more receptive. I remembered Thoreau’s silent reveries at Walden Pond: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately. . .” Manhattan had turned still as those woods, an unexpected retreat in which to think about living more deliberately.

The time was right to do it. The intense push of middle adulthood to raise my daughter was over. My full-time career, creative and thrilling, but also a 24/7 highwire act was over. I could exhale: My daughter had become the person I wish I’d been at her age. My work had rewarded me, benefitted clients and colleagues who I believe are better for the genuine contribution I’d made.

As I reemerge, what are my new priorities? Well, first, of course, I’ve stopped buying shoes. More to the point: I’m spending more time with those I love, investing more in social justice work and in long deferred dreams.

I aspire to honor Shabbat. Take a walk. Notice the sky. Listen. And heed the words of Thoreau who exhorted us to “. . . settle ourselves and . . . wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice. . . and delusion. . . till we come to a hard bottom. . . which we can call reality. . .”

With less time left in life than ever before, this pandemic, bringer of death and despair, has also bred a paradoxical “good”: clarity that the time has come to settle and work and wedge.

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Our Journal of Love and Darkness: A BJ Community Writing Project

Diane Glass Hands down, this pandemic has shown us how important our BJ shul family is to us. We miss our dear friends at BJ—seeing them every Shabbat and on Yontif, praying together, schmoozing. BJ has certainly stepped up during this pandemic to keep us connected. Online services are lovely—they do make us feel less alone and more connected during what has been such an inherently lonely, isolating time—but they are not the same as the real (in-person) thing. BJ truly is our shul family, and we are grateful to have it in our lives—before, during, and (God willing) after COVID.

Shelley English During the cholera pandemic that swept through Poland in 1914, my maternal grandmother, Debora, then twelve years old, lost both her parents. She was neither the oldest nor the youngest of the children, but she was especially adept at finding ways to support the family. Later, as a young mother, she would manage to elude arrest and deportation to Auschwitz and to protect her children. From this strong and wise grandmother, I inherited ways of looking at life and relating to others. I feel she’s been a constant presence in my life over these difficult months of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Last February 28th, I was in the ER at Lenox Hill Hospital, accompanying a patient seeking care. Seated around us were people who’d been given masks because of fever. Some were speaking Italian. A friend’s daughter, a reporter on NY1, came on the screen in the waiting room, talking about the coronavirus. The people wearing masks were tested for the flu, but not for COVID, and then sent home. During the first week and second week of March, I was ill with fever, muscle aches, and the like, but I couldn’t get a test to determine whether I actually had the disease.

At that time, my 82-year-old mother was in the midst of selling her home in Muttontown and moving to a home she owns on Fire Island. She had survived the Holocaust as a young child, at times separated from family members and hidden. Now she was now threatened by this new virus and, like my grandmother Debora, I felt responsible to protect her and keep her safe. I had food delivered to my mother’s porch.

I would make the trip out there, to divide it up, hers and mine. Then I would wave to her through the window and leave.

Spring was a time of constant adjustment and temporary relocations for me and my three sons, mostly driven by the need to make sure I did not inadvertently expose my mother to the virus while helping her. In March and April, masked and keeping a distance, I packed up her house and began moving her belongings out. By May, she was settled into the house on Fire Island and we had become part-time “roommates.” I began a routine of spending part of the week at her house and part, at my apartment in Manhattan, with my youngest son, Jay, now sixteen.

Our three generations—my mother, myself, my three sons—have navigated this pandemic together. For months, I’ve worried about whether my forays between Fire Island and Manhattan would expose my mother to virus. But I found there were no perfect solutions, and I’ve simply had to do the best I can. I believe that if my grandmother Debora were here, she’d remind me that this too shall pass. Over the past year, I’ve begun doing serious research on what she endured during the war, unearthing archival materials I never knew existed. I’m committed to pursuing this work, long after the plague ends. I’m committed to documenting her brave story of resilience.

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Our Journal of Love and Darkness: A BJ Community Writing Project

THE DISTANCE Cathy Arden Dark choreography in the streets of my city in quarantine the new dance of zig zag coming toward me my eye is trained on you for the purpose of avoidance with time to spare I move to the right off the sidewalk and into the street we have lost our natural movement thousands avoiding contact across the world sidewalk to street to sidewalk to street I turn from you in despair as fear envelops every step and breath I dare not take Let the sun rise over the city coloring the angles re-shaping them and then let it set again over the days I have turned away from every stranger in sight of me every thought that I might die if I am near you In my sleep our worlds will merge and sift and flow with ease and I will dance with you in never-ending circles movement of grace I welcome you

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Our Journal of Love and Darkness: A BJ Community Writing Project

Vicky Kahn Losing my father Dr. Fred Kahn in the heart of the Spring, my dad, a man who loved the sun on his face, was the hardest experience in my life to date. I miss him every day but was so supported by everyone at BJ. Rabbi Felicia was virtually present at my dad’s bedside and shepherded my family through his funeral.

Weeks after my dad’s funeral, still feeling the weight of sadness my phone rang. It was Rabbi Felicia checking in on me and on my mother Nancy. Her call touched my mom and I very deeply.

Virtual Morning Minyan with Rabbi’s Roly and Rebecca and Hazzan Ari has also made us feel part of a most special community. I join morning Minyan from Central Park with my face in the sun and nature around me. My dad is with me as I pray. And we all say the Mourner’s Kaddish together as a community.

And in the beautiful Yin and Yang of life, my daughter Celia joined the BJ Teen program this past year, which has given her much happiness. BJ’s commitment to teens, through the most amazing staff, has been the biggest gift of this crazy period of time. Celia also has loved virtually volunteering in Kadima for the youngest kids. She finds them adorable and already knows all their little personalities and can’t wait to see them in person. Celia is also excited to have worked on this year’s Purimshpiel! Last year the kids got in one performance before the world went into quarantine!

Finally, Celia and I were watching Phoebe Spinnell become a Bat Mitzvah this past November. While Rabbi Felicia was blessing her and talking about “happiness and how Phoebe brings us all so much joy,” all of a sudden loud screaming could be heard from our window. Philippe ran in and yelled BIDEN IS PRESIDENT!! It was the most surreal moment—this connection with a most holy simcha and Biden becoming official! We stayed with Phoebe until the end of her service, crying tears of happiness for her, and then spilling out on to the street to cry more tears of happiness for our country and the world.

I grieve my father every day. My dad loved to tell jokes and make people happy. He comes to me in dreams. In the last dream I had with him, my non-tech-savvy dad somehow called me via cell phone, from heaven.

“Dad! How are you! How is heaven??” I asked.

“It’s good, Vicky. It’s really good,” he replied.

Hope health and light. Thank you BJ for being here for me and my whole nuclear and extended family. I don’t know where we would be without you.

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Our Journal of Love and Darkness: A BJ Community Writing Project

The Lost Taste of an Apple Dr. Ellen Schecter lilith.org/articles/the-lost-taste-of-an-apple/ I MOURN THE TASTE OF APPLES—tart-sweet, honeyed. I can still feel the crisp fine flesh in my mouth, but all taste is gone, along with the tang of cinnamon, rich coffee, and spicy tea. Irish oatmeal is simply horsey hot texture, toast is hot cardboard even spread with “butter,” pretzels mere crunch except for crumbs of “salt.” While Covid-19 robbed me of this cherished sense, I was never hospitalized or in grave danger. Although I was very sick and in pain, I was rarely frightened, because my doctor for over 30 years—despite his 16-hour days at the hospital—called or texted me two or three times daily to check on my breathing, oxygen levels, and symptoms. On my worst night, I woke bathed in sweat imagining a mortuary I.D. tag being fastened to my big toe and found myself desperately chanting, “I will not be dead, I will not be dead, I will not.”

After the fever subsided, my enduring symptom was pleuritis—inflammation of the lining of my left lung scarred from previous lung cancer surgery—painful, debilitating, persisting over weeks—but causing no respiratory deficits, so I was quite fortunate. Yet just sitting up for two or three hours to read sends me back to the comfort of my quilt.

Despite my missing sense, I’m grateful for the other four: The sight of emerald philodendron trailing down the sunlight that floods the rich blue walls of my quarantine bedroom; the virtuoso robin who sings all night in an unseen tree outside my window; the daily get-well phone call from Jane, my best friend of 50 years. Though we can no longer exchange morning hugs over lattes and almond croissants at the Silver Moon Bakery, we exchange book tips and grandchild first-steps and new-tooth news longdistance. And as I slowly heal, my needle pulls shining scarlet thread through the quilt I’m embroidering with the names of the children and grandchildren in our family.

Before I got sick, I never felt imprisoned at home during the Lockdown: It offered precious time with my busy litigator husband and opportunities to launch valued projects: to give the final polish to my sixth novel; to finish quilts started 30 years ago; to begin painting for the first time; to enjoy challenging books, which sustained me when I could do nothing but read; to sew colorful masks for the whole family.

Long ago I read that one should be able to live a lifetime in one room without getting bored. I’ve spent my life developing the resources to do that. More than 30 years of living with a painful neurological illness that often forced me into solitude helped me develop those skills. The books in my library speak to me like intimate friends, and outside my windows Iseek an ever-shifting skyscape of clouds and atmosphere; a cityscape of rooftops, water towers, and other people’s windows to scrutinize; the ever-shifting colors of the Hudson River—and the George Washington Bridge—white, black, silver—and especially breathtaking at night. I long for the energy to paint it.

Even lying in bed, another sense channels the soundscape of the city: the syncopated punctuation of now-infrequent cars and buses; the vivid alarms of ambulances; the chatter of dozens of sparrows in the “bird-apartment houses” in the 10-inch space between our tall building and the next; the nightly ear-splitting shriek of one motorcycle blasting through the midnight silence; the radiant song of that one robin. Perhaps best of all, the zany seven o’clock hullabaloo in honor of all the front-liners, medical and otherwise: a cacophony of cowbells, clapping, one droll saxophone, whoo-hoo’s, and random heartfelt yelling.

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Our Journal of Love and Darkness: A BJ Community Writing Project

Dr. Ellen Schecter, continued For many days, that racket woke me in my bed and I could only smile; recently, I made it to a window and rang my cowbell leaning against a wall, feeling a tiny part of the generous energy of my neighbors pouring out their gratitude in that shared five-minute burst of love. In some strange way, that energetic dissonance entered into me as healing. It reminded me that we are all alone together: that gratitude is the ground base I connect with and will continue to draw strength from—like water from a well of sound.

Now I sit staring into the scarlet blossoms of a geranium I placed in the center of our dining table to brighten our quiet meals. I nursed it on a windowsill all winter till it finally broke into exuberant bloom three weeks ago. The crimson is almost fluorescent; I can taste the color despite my lost sense—strong and spicy, hardly shy. I see each large blossom is made of many flirty florets, framed with broad velvet leaves in three, no four— five?—shades of spearmint green.

For me, there will be no end of exploration, even in this small room—even without the honeyed taste of apples, the tang of cinnamon, or the bite of salt.

Judith Rosenbaum Corona Chronology: Fear. Anxiety. Grief. Guilt. Anger. Perseverance. Fatigue. Hopelessness. Depression.

What is the future? Is there light at the end of the tunnel?

We will get through this.

My grandparents suffered pogroms, immigration, and two world wars. My parents lived the Great Depression and WWII. I witnessed divisiveness in this country over Vietnam, abortion, climate change, the Iraq War; I saw the second tower fall.

We were reading White Fragility in a BJ book group when George Floyd was killed. My awareness of systemic and internal racism had deepened.

We saw a silver lining: “The inequality and racism are finally laid bare. Systemic change will have to come.

We’ve hit bottom, we can only go up.”

Are we naïve to hold out hope?

We are privileged; are we willing to sacrifice, work through difficult times ahead before societal change is possible?

Are these the end times? Did the Roman Empire know it was going to fall? Will this be how humanity will end, not a bang or whisper, but a catastrophic pandemic and a civil war?

Inhale, question: How am I to show up? What’s my call?

Exhale, Heneni Continued on next page

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Our Journal of Love and Darkness: A BJ Community Writing Project

Judith Rosenbaum, continued Sometimes I find the strength to turn anxiety into action: I attend Zoom meetings, make calls with BJ and ROV. The election should have been a landslide, undisputed.

But celebrate; we did win. My stomach pains and neck tension vanished overnight.

Then, the man who’d spent 4 years yelling fire in a crowded theater and stirring up hate incited an insurrection. I sat paralyzed, not surprised, yet still shocked.

I remain wary; the United States is not united. Might I witness a civil war in my lifetime? Is this new racism, or did the lost cause of the confederacy never end? From the bima, Roly and Marcelo have warned of fascism for years. I think we came too close; the institutions I believed would save us almost didn’t. Can we be sure it won’t happen again?

“Shrine of our sovereign, royal city, rise up from destruction and fear no more.

End your dwelling in the tear-filled valley, for with God’s compassion you will be upraised.”

How do I see light through darkness?

Gratitude.

Ritual, community, cooking, writing, nature.

I finally make a darn good challah.

I meditate with IJS and attend Zoom Shabbat at BJ, amazed at our rabbis’ and Ari’s passion and warmth, speaking to an empty synagogue.

I walk. I watch the seasons change.

Spring: chipmunks, a family of foxes, a barred owl with its young.

Summer: water, moss, turtles.

Autumn: a majesty of color.

Winter: long nights, snow, crisp air, spring’s inevitable return brings hope.

“One who lives with a sense for The Present knows that to get older does not mean to lose time but rather to gain time. In all of one’s deeds, a person’s chief task is to sanctify time. All it takes to sanctify time is God, a soul, and a moment. And the three are always here.”

(Abraham Joshua Heschel)

Bernice Todres I remember that moment of saying “yes” to Rabbi Felicia’s ask in the front room of the Heschel House. It is a moment seared in my heart. I mean I could sleep in the shelter—I had done that for years—but what if I said yes to more ...

And so I became the leaderless leader of the Heschel study group. And this is what I missed most of all during these past over 300 days isolated in my apartment.

Once a month does not seem like much but I miss my study partners, I miss our rich discussion of Heschel’s words and ideas, I miss eating and drinking together, but most of all I miss having each and everyone in my home on a Shabbat afternoon. For me there is no better way to spend Shabbos.

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Our Journal of Love and Darkness: A BJ Community Writing Project

Robin Sacknoff looking back at the challenge of the covid lock down, pause at home, i realize how being an active dedicated member of bj added to my ability to fare better. i loved the zooming members service on shabbat, the help with the high holidays that was offered to me as a live alone senior, and just the support of a loving community. it brought me to the services, the educational events, and celebrating the high holidays together with my loving community. i wish to thank the rabbis, the staff, and all who have contributed to making it easier for me to get through these challenging times. i look forward to being able again to sit in the first row, as i always do, in person at the services. a special thank you too for putting me in touch with the Institute for Jewish Spirituality. i have attended almost every day their 12:30 sits. it, too , has really helped. thank you all for your efforts, dedication, support, and love.

Hanukah Light 12.08.20 Linda Elovitz Marshall Note: this poem was inspired by prompts (see below) Part I. Last Year As we stood by the menorah Letting in light on a bleak dark day, We recalled past miracles And the miracle that were together, in Israel, the place where it happened…

And with the mouths that said the blessings, And the minds that thought it, Lights were kindled, Hopes lit …

And as we turned, we saw in the windows of buildings behind us, beside us, old ornaments on a fresh-cut tree… all hoping for light, for peace.

For a better world.

For the best of the past To mingle with the hopes for the future.

Light.

In the midst of darkness.

Part II. And then…

Lights, nourish my flickering spirit.

Bring hope, peace, courage, the strength of the Maccabees, the wisdom of Solomon, the kindness of Rebecca.

Lights, burn brightly in this darkest of seasons.

Little lights, glow.

Give hope to all.

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Linda Elovitz Marshall, continued In days of old, nothing – not a candle, not a pebble, not twinkle in the eye – was too little to be loved.

May it continue to be so.

May the lights of hope continue to burn, And nourish my flickering spirit.

Part III… Now Nourishing, also, the flickering spirits of those who have neither might nor power, Those who, in this 2020 year of looking backwards and forwards, Backwards into the bleakness of plague, The pestilence of Middle Ages, The horrors of disease, famine, destruction, poverty…

Forward into…the void.

Let them, those who have neither might nor power, find light, life.

Let them, too, find hope and joy, Wrap their hopes around trees, around nature, around whatever it is in this world That brings joy, that brings relief.

And let all be nourished With light, with hope.

Part IV. A Prayer for Light, in the Darkness Light, reach this place of my need.

Light, shine hope, resilience.

As our candles grow brighter, our lights stronger, each night, Little candles, spread your light.

Remember, too, the past.

The darkest days…

Kristalnacht, bombings, murder, the rise of anti-Semitism, Its ugly, ugly head, Those ghosts are with us, Surrounding us As they are here this Hanukah as in Hanukahs past and future.

No holiday is holy without ghosts.

Yet no day is sacred without light, without hope.

Light, reach into this place of my need.

Spread your miracle of hope, of resilience, of strength this way.

The End Note: The poem was inspired by these lines; Nothing was too little to be loved Nourish my flickering spirit This place of my need No holiday is holy without ghosts Wrap her hopes around the tree those who have neither might nor power Old ornaments on a fresh-cut tree The mouths that said the blessings and the minds that thought it…

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Our Journal of Love and Darkness: A BJ Community Writing Project

Anne Ziff At the onset of our Covid-19 experiences, we had no idea what was ahead of us. I “fled” the City, in March, lived in Westchester with family ‘til June, and moved to my old home town, Westport, independent once again.

Covid advantages: 1. Virtual BJ. This took some time to work out, and the High Holidays were far from perfect, but they did exist, and services became truly a blessing as weeks passed. With experience, technology offered fewer limitations. Friday night services have become the turning point in my work week, a true moment of turning IN, and leaving Covid outside.

2. I work in comfortable clothing, don’t worry about hair or makeup, and patients are equally happy.

Virtual, full-time work has been a blessing; Zelle makes payments easy.

3. I get both to read and write lots more than usual—a gift I really appreciate! Including finally watching “The Crown” on Netflix….

Covid’s most pronounced disadvantages: 1. All’s not perfect, living alone! It’s hard, without talking in-person to colleagues and friends, not having dinner or coffee with people, especially not seeing family, plus socially distancing and not hugging if we do manage to get together.

2. Being “older” I face the need to stay out of stores to shop, buy food, avoid restaurants.

3. Not knowing when COVID will be behind us, I am having a lot of trouble deciding where to live when my Westport lease ends in June.

My unmistakable gratitude-mixed-with-hope exists for this Biden/Harris administration.

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Our Journal of Love and Darkness: A BJ Community Writing Project

Anne Ziff, continued

“Seasons” Short winter days, paired with evenings that begin in the late afternoon, and, this week, continue bleak with no respite, absent the relief of any moon on Tuesday…

It is hard to see the future without even a glimpse of nature’s light, or the glow from one’s own I and Thou.

What is the lesson of this year’s winter holiday season?

In the silence between my heart beats, I sense the whisper of my soul speaking quietly: “The light we seek is not only in candles!” it admonishes, inviting me to open my buried senses of hearing as well as sight.

Feel the warmth of your own determination, Be sustained by your guidance, and your inner wisdom!

See an end to the daily, frustrating requirements of masks, physical distances, endless handwashing, devastating loneliness, each felt through the absence of hugs, voices, or personal contacts with those we long to be near.

September’s warmth promised a harvest of touch and hope, a return to open expressions of the light we had been deprived of as we struggled to protect ourselves from Covid-19, to survive with inner guidance, and spirit guides, each audible; once again, intact.

In the dense darkness of the unrelenting, ongoing Now, it is tempting to deny this promise, difficult to trust that inner light will sustain us as we ultimately succeed in overcoming Covid Fatigue, and, finally, welcome the sweet season of survival as our own.

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Our Journal of Love and Darkness: A BJ Community Writing Project

Anonymous Comprehending the loss of life this past year is very difficult. When it lands on your front door, and in multiple forms, it is even more painful. But life rebounds, expands, and heals. Yes, mostly we heal and learn how to move forward. The pain is embedded in the memories, but the healing is essential to the growth and embracing of the life ahead. We must find a way to heal, we must continue to live.

Judith Trachtenberg Zoom—a year ago it was a verb that I rarely used: move quickly, bring closer into view. And then it became the noun that took over my life, for good and not always so good. BJ moved wondrously to Zoom as Covid became our main focus of living. My wife died in June, buried in another state, we were able to have Felicia officiate with well over 200 people attending, many from BJ. Shaharit has become my daily support group in prayer and in sharing Kaddish. It is warm, embracing, and loving. And some of the people I know only from the waist up! But oh how we “know” the emotions we share daily. Shaharit starts my day (after walking my old dog). It heals and brings unexpected joy and surprises all the time.

So much more has BJ done for and with us but this daily service stands out as life sustaining and growing. Todah rabah and love to all my companions at shaharit.

Anonymous In August 2019, in non-Covid time, my husband died, and the ritual of saying Kaddish began under normal circumstances. Then in March, Covid struck and a great vacuum descended. Good friends sent me Kaddish prayers to be said when there is no minyan. One was a Kaddish for recitation by individuals from the siddur of Rav Amram Ga’on. Clearly the ancient scholars were aware of plagues and how alone one could be, unable to find a community.

And then BJ’s rabbis and staff reached out. On BJ’s website, an announcement came that they were doing daily minyans—as well as other services—on Zoom. You don’t need to be a member, although I am.

Suddenly there was “a group” with whom to share my grief and my prayers and to feel connected. Roly and Felicia and Ari had identified a need.

So one morning, at 8 am I was staring at the trusted faces of BJ people. Roly had presided at my husband’s funeral. Felicia had welcomed my family on the Friday night after Shiva. There we were together again. Even more amazing were the other “checkerboard squares” of Zoom faces. The rabbis recognized congregants, but they were also quick to acknowledge others and asked, “Where are you?” Some BJ members had left NYC and were at family or country homes. Another broad group of nonmembers had also joined services—from Boston and New Orleans, from Wyoming, Costa Rica, and Canada. People who found BJ online. Even some of my out-of-town friends joined from Florida, Virginia, New Jersey. We were all fascinated, grateful, and united.

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Anonymous, continued Despite time zone differences, the generosity of BJ’s open-door and open-heart meant that the online congregation grew. With 60 to 100 faces, I scroll pages and pages of people. Mourners are asked to unmute and one by one the rabbis ask each to say their loved ones’ names. Kaddish and yahrzeit. This year of Covid has brought many more deaths and many more people in need. Unmuted we are together and we can hear each other saying Kaddish as it is meant to be said in unison.

But it is not only loss that we share. We’ve had baby namings where family from Israel could join with children in New York. We have Torah readings on Mondays and Thursdays. Even when normal services resume I hope that this Zoom and live-streaming phenomena continue. How great it is to feel that warmth across miles, to make new friends and chat messages to each other.

When my own eleven months of Kaddish had passed, I was exhausted and I went online for the minyans less often. But when it was my husband’s yahrzeit I was back. In the chat section a number of Zoom friends popped up saying: “I can’t believe it’s been a year. So good to see you again.”

Death and Life Mary-Joan Gerson How does the twig become a bower?

The bud a bloom?

The crusted earth reseeded?

Life dwells in death and Death quickens Life.

No passport is needed across this border.

There are no petitions, no exceptions, and no amnesty.

We are perpetual citizens in both.

The circle of seasons ensures rebirth.

The stars yield solace.

Doesn’t the sunset record an ending and yet pledge a beginning?

We clasp each other tight both in life and in death.

Isn’t this eternity?

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My Story in a Mid Virus Breath of the Living: Winter 2020 Lee Schwartz Like Rosa Parks I sit wherever I want on buses and trains to nowhere rolling around New York City behind plastic chains in a boarded up city looking out from my private cars to see empty stores, makeshift sidewalk cafes, people wandering around aimless, like, a bad twilight zone episode.

This was my city, the one I was born into 77 years ago, but it is not comforting me the way it used to. It is shutting its doors on movie houses and Broadway shows, favorite dining spots are shuttered, permanently.Gem Spa on St. Marks—the home of the sidewalk egg cream is dead. On Broadway, the signs are up, but the theaters are “dark”—the doors are closed. They’ll be no show tonight, or any time soon.

No show, no people, no music, no excitement of curtain going up. This is what I miss the most. I live to be escorted to an alternative universe of song and dance, dreams made real, ephemeral fabrics and faces aglow by the Westmore brothers. I go out day and night and wander the city looking for an escape from my studio apartment. Long to hear a tap dance by a garbage man, Fred Astaire on a lamp post, Judy singing on the trolley. But all is quiet and deadly in the city that never sleeps. The tourists stay home.

The show tunes are all in my head.

A crone wishes to be held, but I live alone and now there are no friendly visits to my door or those of neighbors and friends. When I tell people I ride the buses and trains their eyes grow wide with fright.

They stay locked away in the ordinary and daily routines of self care. If my house burned down tomorrow, if I got the virus tonight, I have to know I tried to reach for magic. The little that is left to find in my glorious New York. I never feel alone, there is the water tower above the building on the L.E.S. The glint off the Chrysler Building, the roar of empty trains below on 14th Street. The homeless making shelters in doorways in one long choiring of noise. This must sustain me now, until the excitement of crowds in Little Italy returns, I won’t let silence and misfortune overwhelm me.

Standing on my roof, in Greenwich Village, I know it will all return. I will take off my mask and you will see the age lines around my mouth. I will remove my surgical gloves to touch the cool green of the pears at Whole Foods. I will shout as the Halloween Parade passes by in all its madness and joy. And all I want is to hug someone and feel their body pressing mine, holding me to life, returned.

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Anonymous It’s been a roller coaster.

Incredible frustration at this country’s poor leadership and guidance in treating and containing the virus; heartbreak for the lives taken and for families and friends who lost loved ones; imagining the incredible pain and anguish they must be experiencing.

Back Lives Matter, hopefully waking up this country to understanding how neither the Civil War nor the Civil Rights Movement put an end to the systemic prejudice, injustice, fear, and anxiety that continue to pervade the lives of Americans of color; comprehending this on a much more profound level than previously.

A presidential election unlike anything our nation has ever experienced, testing our very democracy and the Constitution on which it is founded; unimaginable attempts at voter suppression; a terrifying surge in Anti-Semitism, White Supremacy and conspiracy theories; a questioning of who we really are as Americans and the gap between our stated ideals and the everyday reality.

Gratitude for the privileges and blessings large and small of my own life; an increased closeness and love between my children and me; an appreciation of the joy of my friendships; wanting so much to have friends and relatives in my apartment both casually and on holidays; longing to be inside our great city’s amazing cultural institutions and to participate again in their events which have enriched and brought so much happiness to my life; missing the physicality and warmth of BJ’s services, programs, classes, and people, all so integral to my life and who I am.

And God bless Zoom, and YouTube and all the new technology I have learned during Covid, enabling my TV and computer and phone to provide endless entertainment; and hooray for all of the reading groups and classes and lectures and programs I attend online, and all the great reading I finally have the time to do.

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Deborah Rovner “Even the introverts are lonely,” she proclaimed. But am I lonely? I’ve never felt freer in my solo state. I don’t need to strip in the hallway before bee-lining to shower off my commute, and I don’t need to figure out the impossible task of homeschooling.

But with my first exposure—early on in the pandemic—I realized I was on my own. And that was scary. I received a text on Shabbat from a colleague. We were friendly enough at work but not Facebook friendly outside of work, so I knew something was wrong. A few days prior, it was a day when many patients were canceling after weighing the risk of travel versus the risk of missing treatment, so we had a day seated beside each other for much of the day—more likely four, not six feet apart. We wore our masks, but of course they were lowered for water breaks. We chatted much of that day as a needed distraction.

Anytime someone even cleared their throats back then, an explanation was eagerly awaited. “I choked on water,” said one nurse; “allergies” another defensively spewed. Another sputter from a treatment room warranted more attention—an allergic reaction. Thankfully, the symptoms were easily managed without a nebulizer which could aerosolize the Covid virus if someone was infected. But, alas, that Shabbat, the nurse texted me that later that night, she was overcome with malaise and muscle aches, so she let me know she tested positive for the virus, and for me to be on alert for symptoms.

So, what does a single gal do in this case? She goes to the bodega to pick up a carton of milk and a dozen eggs, she gets the good tea down from the shelf that warrants a chair to reach it, and then, she showers and shaves (what if a handsome EMS rescue is needed?). Then, she (me) texted many to share in her news of exposure. Prayers were sent up seeking wellbeing for my colleague and for my protection.

Distractions from Hallmark movies were sought—who could focus on anything of substance? But if I got sick, I knew I was alone. There were many offers, and reminders that help was a text or call away. I wouldn’t/couldn’t ask my older boyfriend or risk exposing him if I fell ill. And I wouldn’t ask for help from well-meaning friends because I wouldn’t risk exposing them either. And I wouldn’t tell my parents and subject them to useless worry.

Back then, suboptimal access to Covid testing dominated the news, but I was fortunate and went for a test that Monday. A few minutes after my test, my hypochondriacal headache and sore throat (the latter from talking too much) resolved, as did my low back ache which I was prone to anyways. A few hours later, I texted everyone, “COVID NEGATIVE!!!” with smiley faces and prayer signs—emojis of gratitude.

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The Amidah Sheila Weinberg Resting in my spiritual tradition, I recall with love these names: Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebecca, Jacob, Rachel, Leah, Bilhah, Zilpah Abiding with me in the infinite vastness of consciousness.

With unimpeded vulnerability I immerse in their love everlasting.

May I feel safe and protected.

May I feel blessed with compassion that forever shelters All generations.

Essential hope for transformation From death, dullness, constriction, fear, hierarchy, separation To life, trust, openness, release, love, unity, justice Flowing like a mighty river.

From on our knees to standing tall, from sick to healed, From bound to free.

The power of transformation endures.

The power of transformation is faithful.

The power of transformation is part of our nature.

May it flow.

What is the path of wisdom?

To step back Releasing the limited, conditioned, reactive cycles of thought.

To turn with grace Toward primordial awareness, Toward the breath of life.

To become close, intimate With the sacred work, Reuniting parts with the whole.

What is forgiveness?

Who forgives?

Endless, gracious awareness bestows forgiveness Without effort.

Again, and again Our suffering is seen. Our suffering is held.

In the might of its vastness, In the power of its emptiness.

It has no name.

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Sheila Weinberg, continued May we know this earth as our blessing.

She is our mother.

She feeds us with her goodness.

May we cherish her every day.

Sound the great Shofar For freedom.

May oppression be toppled.

May our leaders be wise and honest.

May they embody the Divine qualities of love, compassion and justice.

May greed, hatred and delusion be revealed for what they are.

May they dissolve from their own noxious fumes In the open clarity of the endless sky.

May they no longer find a shelter in our hearts, words or deeds.

Return compassion to Jerusalem And to all divided cities, to all warring nations; Help us find eternity in hands holding hands Rather than in walls That sunder and divide.

For those of us who wish for better days May we know safety in this very day.

May we see compassion flower And love embrace doubt and fear.

What power listens to our prayers?

What kind of hearing receives our laments and cries?

What presence never turns us away, But allows the great emptiness to fill our souls?

We long to return to a fullness we never knew but still remember.

We long to be seen, known And held in everlasting love, in a flame that is not extinguished.

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Sheila Weinberg, continued May our eyes behold All the exiles returning home.

Deeply grateful We bow to this immense interconnected mystery, The rock of our life, the shield of our safety, From generation to generation.

We are grateful for this life which we do not possess.

We are grateful for this awareness which we do not own.

We are grateful for the daily miracles and wonders that arise and pass.

Our eyes behold them!

Evening, morning and afternoon.

Compassionate presence is eternal; Love is eternal.

Here we rest.

It is good.

Taking refuge For the sake of peace In the expanse of space, Primal awareness and unconfined compassion Which is the deep nature Of everyone’s mind.

Taking refuge for the sake of Goodness and blessing Grace and lovingkindness.

This is our heritage as human beings.

This is the gift of this life.

This is everyone’s blessing.

May we See, May we know, May we sense, May we take to heart.

May we remember Amen

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Sheryl Checkman In 2020, I found balance and inspiration by walking miles daily around Manhattan and its environs, camera in hand. This book chronicles some of these journeys from March through December, a time of lockdowns and social distancing, which enabled me to change my perspective and use creativity and art as a way to deal with life during the Covid-19 Pandemic. I used my time this past year to learn and grow spiritually and artistically, seeing the world in new ways through the lens of my camera.

At the start of 2020 I had great expectations. I was turning 65 in April and, as a present to myself, I was planning to take a long-awaited trip to Africa to scuba dive off the coast of Mozambique and then a few days of safari at Kruger National Park in South Africa. One more thing to scratch off my bucket list. But then Covid happened and life changed for everyone. Cities were on lockdown and people were dying.

Isolation, we were told was the only way to stay safe. There would be no trip to Africa this year. My year had to be re-imagined.

I live alone, so during the early days of the pandemic, the only visual connection to be had with other people was through Zoom calls. Taking walks by myself was initially a lonely venture until I felt comfortable enough to walk, socially distanced, with a friend or two. I started to take my camera with me on my walks. I no longer felt lonely. I began to see that despite the fear and sadness surrounding my city, there were still places to explore and beauty to be found. So, I made the decision to look for the beauty in my surroundings, work on my photography and make the best of a situation I had no control over.

The above paragraphs are the beginning of a book of my photographs taken during the isolating months of 2020 that I have just completed and about to self-publish.

My book ends with this: 2020 was a year like none other, and one I am glad is over. The hundreds of thousands of lives lost and businesses that fell victim to this virus is painfully tragic. My heart goes out to everyone who has suffered a loss of a loved one, had their income or business impacted, or spent this past year in lonely isolation.

I salute and thank all the health care workers and first responders who have stepped up to ease the suffering and keep us safe.

My photography and the excursions I’ve taken around the New York area have made this year bearable for me. I hope my photos have brought some measure of brightness to an otherwise dark year. I am optimistic that 2021 will be different, better. I am hopeful that the vaccine will be instrumental in leading us back to a more normal existence. But I also hope that the positive things I have learned this past year will continue to guide me forward. And, perhaps I will make it to Africa.

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Susan Viuker Lieberman The BJ morning minyan grounds me and gives meaning to my day.

It’s cheering to make my weekly BJ calls. Hopefully, these connections help others. The wonderful BJ rabbis and cantor add to our spirituality, learning and friendships with myriad programs and classes. All these help me maintain equilibrium and strengthen my resilience. Thank you Roly, Ari, Felicia, Shuli and Becca and everyone on staff.

Joni Brenner Luckily I have people asking “so how are you?” and they wait for an answer.

I’m reminded of each inquiry, received and offered as I tie the four corners of my Tallit around my fingers.

I’m aware of the missing blue color. I dedicate it to the Tzdekimm in this world, the health care workers, those for whom we have stood up for and applauded, night after night during Arvit.

I hold these strings together for my family and friends, asking for continued connection as I go up and down my ladder … and see what is foundational and what is aspirational … my Mishkan has become classes, services, singing, names and faces on Zoom … I wonder what happened to the gifts that Jacob gave to his sons to bring to Egypt ( Gen 43:11). Maybe, like me during this year of change, they needed to leave them behind, unburden themselves, in order to create space for the new and authentic.

Sara Simone Barenfeld I would like to share that in June 2020 I gave birth to my first child, a daughter, named Naomi Hila. Like many, I have suffered through moments of deep helplessness, wondering what will become of our world.

And yet, bringing in life at this time has been my greatest joy. When I look into Naomi’s eyes, I see a future filled with so much hope. Yes, the Jewish people have overcome many tragedies. As American Jews, we hold a profound duty to uphold the traditions and ethics of our people. Every time I join a minyan, virtual or otherwise, I feel that duty. If Naomi’s great-grandparents saw us today, davening in a Zoom minyan, I think they would be so proud. We have made all of our ancestors proud with both our strength and unlimited emotion. In November 2020, we had a Brit Bat and gave Naomi the name Yehudit HaTikvah. She is counting on all of us, to stay hopeful, and I know we will make her proud.

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June Nislick We had been lucky to age with energy, curiosity, and love intact. Art had health problems, but we faced each one with optimism that was rewarded with the best care and miraculous recoveries. The cancers were cured and the Parkinson’s was held in check. When he was diagnosed with Lewy Body Dementia we were brave and strong. When Covid confined us to quarters we hunkered down with a sense of comfort and security. We started to refer to our den as “The Chapel” and attended more BJ Services online than we had live during the past year.

That all changed April 1, during peak of New York’s pandemic, when Art broke his hip. The 36 hours alone in the ER, transfer to HSS, surgery, and recovery played havoc with his compromised mind and he lost whatever threads of reality he had been holding onto.

Felicia and Roly were both supportive and helpful. We hired health care aides and very, very slowly Art improved, although neither his balance nor confidence did. He only felt safe in a wheelchair.

For the next several months our frustrations were heightened by the inability of our children, in Massachusetts, to visit.

They begged us to move to Boston. But we hesitated. We had a beautiful, handicapped friendly apartment. We had outstanding skilled aides, doctors and, most of all, wonderful friends who I was able to see occasionally in outdoor venues during the summer.

Still it made sense to move. My responsibility in caring, scheduling, entertaining, shopping, without family backup was not easy. I gave the kids a list of “must haves” that I thought was completely impossible. But they found an apartment that ticked all my boxes. In late October we moved. We still tune in occasionally but BJ feels part of that glorious other life.

We are content with our loving, generous children. Art is doing better, buoyed by their regular presence.

But New York is the gold standard. The energy is palpable and our fearless friends are irreplaceable. So if life isn’t always really good, it is really good enough. Thank you BJ for having been part of the best years of our lives.

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Judith Barack I have been fortunate during this pandemic to have family and friends that I can contact via phone and email. I have professional activities that have paused, but I am looking forward to continuing when the pandemic is over. I am grateful to BJ for creating havurahs and livestream services and activities to create connections and learning opportunities.

I think BJ has been amazing in your compassion and attention to the realistic needs of members and the community, and I am very happy to be a member.

Hazak v’amatz! (I think that means may your strength continue.)

Best, Judy Barack

Judy Geller-Marlowe BJ has been our absolute anchor during these anxious months of difficult days. Words cannot adequately express our great gratitude to Roly, Felicia, Ari, Shuli, Becca, Dave and Deborah, Grace, Dan, Satoshi and other musicians, Beth, Julie, Nick, and ALL the behind the scenes staff. What an incredible daily connection of support, warmth and love! TODA RABA!

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Praying with my cat* Harriet R. Goren Shabbat, wrote Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, is a palace in time, filled with with joy and rest no matter where in the universe we might be. For me, though, it was always hard to imagine the door to the palace as anywhere other than the 88th St. sanctuary, where sounds, songs, colors, and the collective breath of magnificent crowds seemed permanently intertwined with prayer, place, and time.

But then it was March 2020, and Shabbat became a screen in my living room. As days turned into weeks, and weeks surrendered to months, the missing element of place made time lose much of its shape for me. The impossibility of being physically present with my community on Shabbat felt like an actual, visceral ache, as if someone punched me in the stomach.

Zoom morning minyan turned into my new marker of time, and a reason to move from one room to another during those worst of days when we were afraid to leave our apartments. My cat Leonardo da Vinci also discovered the minyan, and his mission in life became to distract me from the Zoom screen by any means possible. It was cute at first, and then really annoying. But one day I realized his jealousy was completely warranted. Something amazing was happening on that screen.

In our beloved sanctuary, we mostly pray while staring at the backs of one another’s heads. That’s just the nature of sitting in rows. And they’re beautiful backs—but rows mean we’re rarely panim el panim, face to face, like the encounter between God and Moshe that represents the deepest way to truly see and understand. On Zoom, though, at this cursed time when revealing our faces could kill us, praying in community requires looking at faces that are vulnerable in that exact way. I’m moved by those who choose to turn on their video and, deeply etched on faces in little minyan squares, share more kinds of emotion than I have words for.

And my community can see me, too. I’m seen. I’m so grateful for the gift of technology that makes it possible to receive this blessing of not being alone even while isolated. Whenever I found myself in despair of this year of going nowhere, of feeling like I was in frozen suspension, I remembered how often I found prayer in unexpected places: A computer screen. A socially-distanced conversation in a bodega (with someone I didn’t already know, Sheheheyanu!). A new ritual of Zooming with friends before the start of Shabbat. A really, truly silent Amidah, since everyone else is muted.

I still ache for when we can pray in person once again, breathing all our breaths together in a crowd.

Until then, Leonardo da Vinci will continue to remind me of the many blessings hidden behind the curses. * With apologies to Rabbi Heschel z”l for this title

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Anonymous Before COVID, I had a network of relationships, ranging from intimate to casual, that helped define my life Besides my immediate family, there were friends, some old some less old, colleagues and former colleagues, and lots people with whom I had loose relationships, a clerk in this store or that with whom I might schmooze, neighbors with whom I had a nodding acquaintance, people I would see at the gym but never got to know.

COVID shattered that network. There was no more gym, no more schmoozing in shops or cafes, no more water cooler to hang around in the office. But what emerged almost immediately was a picture of which relationships really mattered, friends to whom I reached out and who reached out to me, even if our relationship had grown more distant over the years. Although I live both in New York and California, the BJ community, to which I have belonged for almost 30 years, turned out to be a relationship that mattered to me, mattered a lot.

Technology created opportunities in the midst of the loneliness, uncertainty, and confusion, particularly of the early days. Suddenly, my friends and teachers at BJ were (or could be) in my house, by Zoom or livestream. And so I was happy to engage with the BJ community on that basis. It was no longer a matter of feeling “less than” on Livestream or stopping by BJ when I was in New York. Everyone was suddenly “remote,” and community at a distance became everyone’s core value, almost a sacrament. It took a plague to make that happen.

My “circle” and I have been lucky so far. Only a handful of people in my group have gotten sick, one seriously ill, and everyone has recovered. My wife and I each have moms, in their early 90s, who have remained healthy. And all that has required some effort, some sacrifice. Nowhere near the sacrifice of the front-line workers, but everyone does his or her own part. And now, waiting for the vaccine requires patience, while the new virus strains require new vigilance.

But through all of this, I have learned better how to recognize “value” in relationships, in what I bring to them, in what I take from them. And although I miss my pre-COVID network, and the life that went with it, I am grateful for the relationships and opportunities that have emerged, for friendship, for study, for prayer. And I am wondering whether, in the post-COVID world, it will be possible to sustain parts of the life that has sustained me the past year.

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Orly Mallin Dear Covid, You have really challenged us during this time. You want to break our resilient spirits but you can’t. You won’t. You cannot. How dare you. You threatened lives. Have taken too many. And just want to reinvent yourself to continually live amongst our lives. You know that we are stronger than you. We as a collective entity can make your days here be only history in the books. You have gotten the attention. Made our health care workers primarily focus on your mark.

But your time is coming to an end. You better pack up and get moving. Onward. Outward. The end is coming. Your impression has been felt. But I still have you know we are STRONGER AND WISER THAN YOU. Where you originate leaves no bearing right now. But our schools, places of work, places of worship, restaurants, fitness centers, and communal spaces are silently hiding. Our celebrations and observances in public like weddings, funerals, graduations, proms, Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, and birthday parties have ceased in the public arenas. But I’ll have you know … you cannot stop us from learning. Stop us from celebrating. Caring. Laughing. Crying. Believing and Connecting. You cannot divide us and show us our weakness and limitations. You are showing us that we can love more. Share more. Give more. And stand on our two feet with conviction, wisdom, humbleness, and passion. I have become a better parent since March 2020. A better wife. A better person. And a bigger Jew. I don’t think your trail was without a lesson. I wish you never set foot on this Earth. But it’s our duty to stop you quickly and make us walk into our potential and light.

I never want to see you or hear your name again. So remember there are more of us than you. So leave.

Disappear. Get Away. Bury yourself in the sand and vanish. FOREVER. SO HELP ME GOD.

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Sonia Orenstein Can one call a year egregious? Can one say the consequences were egregious? The word comes to mind.

Can one say the word and contain within it the world with all its devastation, resourcefulness, death, and hopefulness?

What has God wrought? How do we maintain faith? What is our purpose? We must make meaning.

What a year. No summary is possible, memory is an imposition, positioning is impossible. I have no narrative yet.

I am profoundly grateful to every member of the BJ community who remained present to help us all survive. I am profoundly sad for all our losses, and continue to cling and deepen my connection, within and outside myself.

Sian Gibby What has gotten me through the pandemic are filaments of connection, most of which I had been taking for granted: Living in my landlady Paula’s family home with her and her daughter and grandsons; hanging out in my neighbor Joyce’s backyard with a couple of other elderly ladies when the weather allowed; my cat, Antonio Gramsci; weekly erev Shabbat calls with a BJ group; the anticipation of meeting the newest little Gibby; my beloved colleagues at the job I love so much that even through all this I was only ever excited Sunday evening to get to work the next morning; davening remotely in a way that has allowed me a measure of solitude in prayer. Living this year has been like floating away from my former life (the way astronauts do sometimes in movies when they put on space suits and go out into the void and then something goes horribly wrong), floating out of control, only to find myself attached by a thin string that I can hardly believe is strong enough to hold me but that does hold, and when I examine it closely I see that it’s made up of all those threads braided together.

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Toni Siegel This past new year’s eve I realized that unbeknownst to me, 2020 had been a very good year. Prior to Dec. 31st I wouldn’t have known that. I was terrified at the beginning like everyone else; had recently lost my husband of 40 years and was coping with intense grief; was cut off from my life line of my many friends and critical hugs; developed slightly nagging hip pain which developed into intense pain, was bedridden until I could get hip replacement surgery which took a couple of extra months because of covid. Being bedridden produced other health problems and required a home health aide.

So how did 2020 get to be such a good year? My personal lockdown coincided with covid so thanks to Zoom and other than the hugs, I lost no contact with friends, even strengthened friendships. Went to more BJ services than I could have without Zoom and saw people I cared about. I discovered the sweet benefit of private chat just to say “Shabbat Shalom” and “sending love.” I discovered other shuls and learned so many ways to interpret the same parsha. When I came to BJ I was a child in my Jewish development even though I was well into adulthood and even parenthood. They say it is important to give your children roots and wings. Through my Zoom shul exploration I learned even more that BJ is my home and my roots; but now I have my wings to also learn elsewhere. I took more classes from home on Zoom at BJ and elsewhere than I ever would have without Zoom, even a philosophy of math course.

I had many Zoom social get togethers and continued study groups and book groups. I learned without a doubt how important people are to me and how important I am to other people. Some family issues developed. I discovered what was really important and that I had the inner control and wisdom to work on them. I began to believe in myself simply because I was managing. I had a couple of friends who called all the time to solve the problems of the world which we did regularly. They kept me sane.

I got more exercise because my entire social life was about walking. I averaged about 4 miles a day with old and new friends. Also kept me sane.

I turned the corner on my grief about losing my husband and understood I had lost his physical body but had gained his spiritual presence. The angel of death can’t take that from me.

And so for me, by spending so much time by myself and having to adapt, I learned that I could adapt and thrive. And that New Year’s Eve, when I realized I was happy, but I had no one to share it with, because most everyone I knew was miserable, I experienced for the first time a stabbing, painful, visceral loneliness of not being able to connect. I broke down into sobs. It was an awful feeling. Then I understood that god was helping me develop compassion for those who feel that way all the time. I thought I knew lonely, but this was a whole order of magnitude different. And so I closed out the year with my empathy radar sharpened.

I certainly don’t mean to make light of a global tragedy, but in my tiny little micro world, great fear, health issues, complete loss of control, isolation, all forced me into a space where I was able to accept my own strength, resilience, and capacity for lovingkindness. That is the Toni Peter believed in but I never really did. Meeting her on my own helped me through the grief of losing him. But it took all this for me to hear him say, “I told you so.”

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Anonymous From my inconsistent participation in Daf Yomi, I gained the feeling that I live on this earth alongside talkative, thoughtful people from many centuries ago. I set my galut in relation to theirs, a more catastrophic one from which they creatively rebuilt. In 2020, the darkness was real: a chasm revealed (once again, more intensely) of inequitable vulnerability. Tentatively, incompletely, Judaism provided nets of human connection and (minor) repair: through tzedakah, prayer, Torah, community. Adding threads to the cloth: daf yomi inspired a new affectionate nickname for my husband: “maitive” (to pose a question that is also an objection), a name that fits him perfectly. Living in Vermont, my decades-long dread of the short days of winter became transfigured by my new practice of facing outward toward the dusk and chanting a few lines from the maariv service. Then I began, at all times of day, to expand my visual/emotional experience of November greys: to see a diffused whitish glow in a sky without definition, soft, opalescent. Sometimes, the entire atmosphere brightened subtly; the subdued light would glimmer, modifying grey towards white. Shadow became more intriguing; at dusk, the precipitation of darkly violet blue out of grey. Feelings of withdrawal, humility, openness.

From my learning, three moments stand out and sustain me. A teacher mentions a commentary on the list of sacrifices for the new month, characterizing katat l’adonai, as actually a sin offering for Hashem.

Rosh Hodesh (the sliver of light disappears) as a moment of emptiness, God’s creating a world that has this emptying of the world of light, emptying it of goodness. We hold Hashem guilty for this suffering, having created this world that has this emptying. Could my tradition acknowledge and even have a ritual for such a feeling? I was strangely comforted by knowing that such a thought had a place in Judaism.

Dini Lewittes mentioned that teshuvah stood among the list of things created prior to the creation of the world. She explained, this midrash marks the importance of teshuvah in the tradition. If Hashem gave us a way to do harm; Hashem also gives us a pathway back. And from Aviva Richman’s class on Midrash Eichah, I learned: our experience is unfathomable yet, we have within our tradition the resilience to confront it. For example, a midrash about two Rabbis who enter a city and say to the inhabitants: bring us to the guards of your city. They were brought to the prison guards and the bailiff. The two Rabbis responded: “No! These are not the guards of your city; the teachers are the guards (they uphold and protect the city).

I thank all of my teachers: my inspiring zug partners, my BJ music hevra, Dan Nadel for giving us the scores, Roly from whom I learned a beautiful “yedid nefesh,” Shoshana from whom I learned to connect to two refugee families, Martha Ackelberg for organizing the food for La Morena; the BJ rabbis for creating such beautiful and moving services.

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Betsy Diamant-Cohen I live in Baltimore, MD, and belong to a small egalitarian shul that meets in a senior citizen’s center on Saturday mornings. At the beginning of the pandemic we had no services on Shabbat, and a friend told me about BJ. After just one Shabbat morning service, I was hooked. The harmonies were exquisite; the dvar torahs were scholarly, inspiring, and politically aligned with my beliefs; and the Zoom filming was done beautifully with three columns, each with a different patterned background. Unquestionably, BJ was a shul for me!

Even though I can’t attend services at BJ in person, I became a member. Then, when musical accompaniment was added to the Shabbat services, the shul became even more appealing. Yizkor during the high holidays was the most spiritual yizkor I have ever experienced.

I have not met any of the BJ staff, but I feel as if I know them because I see them week after week and hear them have great discussions together from the bima. When I was a student at Brandeis, I loved singing zmirot after Shabbat lunch; singing along with Hazzan Priven after services fills me with joy.

Although I am happy to continue as part of the small Chevrei Tzedek community here in Baltimore, I am also grateful to have found Bnai Jeshrun. I am grateful that during this scary, isolating time, BJ became part of my life.

Jessica Rodas Living in Queens and raising two small children made it difficult to regularly attend family Shabbat services. Once the pandemic began we started participating online weekly. The first time we signed on both my husband and I cried. We were overcome with so many emotions like fear and sadness but in that moment we also felt so much appreciation for BJ. That feeling has lasted throughout the past ten months as we have joined in Shabbat family services, High Holiday services, shaking the lulav and etrog in the Sukkah, lighting Hanukkah candles, as I joined in a Zoom call for mental health providers, and watching our son participate virtually in his first year of Kadima. Even though we are separated by a screen we continue to feel deeply connected to our community within BJ. As a Jew I have struggled at times to make sense of why this is happening and why good people are dying and suffering in so many other ways. I have felt anger towards people not doing what they’re supposed to be doing, at least in terms of what I think is right versus wrong. At times I struggle with my anger and sadness. However, I had a turning point back in November. I decided to accept, as much as I could, that it’s not for me to judge. My judgement came from a place of wanting to be right and feel secure about my own decisions.

Everyone has their own circumstances, and their situation is not the same as mine even if on the surface it sometimes appears that way. I decided to put my faith in G-d. Even if someone was doing something I wouldn’t do, I was going to trust that they weren’t doing it out of selfishness. I think many people believe they’re doing the “right” thing. I decided to give people the benefit of the doubt. Being angry wasn’t helping me and it certainly wasn’t going to change the world around me. I also had to continually remind myself how fortunate and blessed I am. My husband and I are both working and raising our now 2.5 and 5-year-old children. We closed on a bigger apartment in mid-February before any of this began and rather than moving in as planned in April we moved in at the end of June. We spent the first four months of the pandemic all four of us living in a one-bedroom apartment. A family friend lent us her apartment so I could go there to work since my job required complete privacy. The gratitude I feel for that friend will stay with me forever. All the challenges along this journey have helped center me and remind me time and time again how grateful I am for my family, friends, BJ community, career, and my life. I want to come out of this dark time and hold onto that gratitude daily.

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HOPE DURING PANDEMIC Robin Fleischner adoptsurrogatelaw.com/2020/08/19/hope-for-becoming-a-parent-during-pandemic/ “Are you an optimist or a pessimist?” I asked my son and my husband on our drive to the house we rented for the last two weeks of August on Lake Canandaigua.

Like many who sheltered in place in New York City during the pandemic, I was traveling by car to a longed-for retreat in nature. And like many, facing uncertainty about the future, I was wondering how to hold onto hope.

As an attorney dedicated to helping my clients become parents through adoption, surrogacy, and donation, I am a die-hard optimist. Yet the pandemic makes everything harder, from adoptive parents’ access to care for a newborn in the hospital to scheduling IVF. Looking out on the magnificent, ever-changing view of the lake, I am trying to take lessons from nature.

The dark night makes the lake invisible, yet, no matter what, the morning reveals a renewed blue-green vista. The clouds release an unwanted passing shower, then roll past leaving shifting images of the crystal water and vast sky. I swat annoying insects from around me, lean back in my Adirondack chair, and feel the breeze shift, imparting delicate bird chirps.

My homework will be the same as my advice to adoptive and intended parents. Hold onto hope and know that the pandemic will pass, just as nature renews itself constantly. And memorize the image of your baby-to-be, just as I am memorizing the breathtaking lake view to bring back with me on my return.

Robin Fleischner, a former BJ Vice President, is an adoptive parent who has devoted her legal career to creating families through adoption and assisted reproduction.

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Poem: HER Kelly Willner During the night Before her masked Covid flight to Cambridge, Massachusetts for her final semester as an undergraduate in the Harvard yard where so many great minds have THOUGHT and taught the world of physics and humanities the world has changed beyond anyone’s wildest imaginations from the time she stepped into those hallowed halls of revered educations, three different American administrations, truth traded for belief, journalism twisted, a young eighteen year old mind dreaming of the time when she will perform on the great stages of Broadway, and took a detour and did go on the Hello Dolly National tour.

Returning to an inverted, surreal campus in its 384 year old history of now virtual classes and no physical touch STILL advancing mankind on earth and throughout the universe, regular people dying because the color of their skin in 2020 because of him, a reality star Murdoch puppet who’s head swelled of kingly greed, and believed his personal myths of autocratic, fascist fiction USED the uneducated person through unsolicited far-reaching free, unverified modern press Twitter turned bitter Tweet wars and civil unrest STORMING the U.S. without arrest.

Mommy, MOMMY Floyd’s last breath Only here in the former most coveted country turned upside down did the cloth mask of the worldly Coronavirus become more then a symbol of falsehoods and veracities but a woven, thin barrier to life and death.

Entering the esteemed, now cyber-guided discourse it is HER responsibility to address Continued on next page 33

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Kelly Willner, continued the new world actuality from the ground plane level to transcending humankind.

Twenty-three years old she CREATED the space to teach 54 year old Guatemalan politicians and Desert Storm Navy Seals.

Having walked off the shuttered pandemic stage, pivoted into social change helping to usher in a new president of democracy Restoring Truth and facts, touching younger lives coaching her craft, using her voice singing to the audiences across the nation in prized 200 year old theaters, being the first woman actress in year of one hundred and seventy one of the illustrious Hasty Pudding, Learning her mother has cancer AND THEN Returning to the Harvard gates that used to make her cry thinking she was out of place.

Now a woman who demonstrates strength and compassion, not just directing Spring Awakening, but AWAKENED her realization in HER ABILITY to make a difference for the good of her fellow man and woman, from child to senator, from daughter to caretaker, healer to believer from Franklin Fellow leader to student of the world interacting on horizontal and vertical levels, moving forward, in and out, around, and throughout.

Always being present!

And knowing to pause Sometimes for her soul and sometimes for her cause.

She is a shining light to the world.

Her light oozes out of HER without her knowing it.

She is now independent, no longer an undergraduate, but a student and a teacher of the universe.

Strumming her ukulele, putting herself out there, and being here!

She is... MY DAUGHTER. SHE IS HER. SHE IS. HER SHE/HER

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“A MECHAYAH “ Hilda Chazanovitz The disturbance coming from the street on that Shabbos morning, November 7th seemed familiar. Yet the sounds from the street became louder—cars were honking, people were clapping and I heard the clanging of pots and pans. All the joyous hooting and hollering reminded me of the daily 7pm homage to front-line workers that had started months ago. It started to sound like a raucous symphony or an improvised jazz tune. Returning to my computer to check for any news, I clicked on to the homepage of the New York Times and stared at the oversized headline in bold letters: “BIDEN BEATS TRUMP, HARRIS IS FIRST WOMAN ELECTED VP.” I read the headline twice, repeating it out loud for emphasis. I was moved to tears, all I could say to myself was, “it’s a mechayah” and hoped my late mother would hear me.

It was especially fitting that I was thinking in my first language as my heart filled with emotion, almost unable to speak, verklempt. And it felt like my mother was listening.

Yiddish or Mamaloshen was the rich legacy of what my Polish family had lost and tried to hold on to after they arrived safely in the US in 1949. It was also a reminder of the best part of my relationship with my late mother, Pola. Her words still speak to me, “Even in Amerike, do kon es geshen,” she would say, “It can happen here.” As a Holocaust survivor, her sense of pain and loss never left her. Despite that, she also believed in di goldene medina, the golden land, and the promise of Amerike — as did I, until the last four years.

Mechayah at its simplest is about experiencing joy or pleasure. You shiver and say “a mechayah” when you taste something that is beyond delicious. When you jump into the ocean on a hot summer day and feel revived, you throw up your arms and yell, a mechayah! You whisper, a mechayah, when you hear music like “Rhapsody in Blue” or the voices of Pavarotti and Whitney Houston—so wondrous you might weep or dance.

I hadn’t realized how much politics had taken hold of me until that moment on November 7th. My family history was inescapable; it has defined my worldview. I was living in a country I did not recognize, and the patterns were all too familiar: the Muslim ban, the hateful language about refugees seeking asylum, separating families at the border, the sight of neo-Nazis marching with burning torches and shouting, “Jews will not replace us,” the senseless and preventable killing of George Floyd and too many others, attacks on women, the rise of a serious and violent white supremacy movement and mass shootings at synagogues and other places of worship.

That Saturday morning felt like a new beginning. Mechaya comes from the Hebrew, chai, meaning life (as in l’chaim) and its meaning can suggest being brought back to life. That is just what I felt then, knowing to savor the moment. I would remain vigilant for what was sure to follow, hopeful once again.

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Ariela Noy One of the most significant tools to helping our country recover from the COVID-19 pandemic is right in front of us: a safe and highly effective vaccine that can help prevent the spread of this deadly disease.

More than 354,000 American lives have been lost, with over 38,000 deaths in New York alone.

On January 4, I got my first dose and my second dose on January 7. As an Attending Physician at Memorial Sloan Kettering (MSK), I work with critically ill and highly compromised patients each day.

Taking the vaccine is part of my duty to keep them safe. Let me tell you why I took the vaccine, and why I hope you will, too.

My patients have uniquely fragile immune systems. While many of us can recover from COVID-19, some of my patients are in grave danger and they are depending on all of us to stop the spread and help them stay safe.

On Memorial Day 2019, I received an email from a previous patient about her friend, Joanna, who just found she had a belly full of lymphoma, a cancer of the immune system, only six weeks after the birth of her second child. Within a couple of days we admitted her to MSK to start the journey of healing through immunotherapy and chemotherapy. Her cancer went into remission and for a while she enjoyed a normal life.

Less than a year after completing treatment, Joanna felt well, but a surveillance scan found the cancer had resurfaced aggressively. The odds of more chemotherapy helping her were low on account of the multiple drugs she had received the first go round, the short time frame to relapse and other factors. We started treatment with a back-up plan.

The Food and Drug Administration approved two breakthrough drugs in 2019 for the treatment of aggressive B cell lymphoma called chimeric antigen receptor T cells or CAR-T for short. Joanna decided to participate in a clinical trial for CAR-T cell therapy that pairs a novel CAR-T with a drug to boost the immune system, called an immune check point inhibitor. Joanna’s cancer disappeared in one month.

However, this drug regimen comes at a price: a slow and prolonged recovery of the normal immune system. Joanna has very low levels of infection fighting cells across the board and will have trouble handling any infection including bacteria and viruses.

Since the COVID-19 outbreak in March, Joanna has barely left her house. Her two toddlers are home 24/7.

Her family does not come to visit. Her husband only leaves the house to run errands, wearing a mask, social distancing and sanitizing judiciously. But somehow after Thanksgiving, when the case numbers of COVID-19 surged in New Jersey, he brought COVID-19 home. So now Joanna is fighting for her life…again.

She was one of the first people at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center to get a monoclonal antibody, the same experimental treatment President Donald Trump received for COVID-19. However, despite Joanna’s recovery, she is unable to make any of her own antibodies against COVID-19 because immune system is so weak. She will stay susceptible to the virus, may get reinfected and may not be able to get vaccinated for more than a year.

She is heartbroken after everything she has gone through. She is outraged at the selfishness of others whose perception of liberty means putting others in harm’s way. I am outraged, too.

Continued on next page

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Ariela Noy, continued When the time comes for you to consider the vaccine, please think about those around you: your elderly family members, your child’s teacher, the essential workers, or those immunocompromised patients who are most susceptible to the virus. When we receive the vaccine, we are protecting those around us.

So please, if you will not get a vaccine when it is your turn because of self-love and self-preservation, do it for someone else. Do it for Joanna.

Ariela Noy MD is an Attending Physician and Member at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Clinical Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical School in New York City.

Myriam A. NYC January 25, 2021 | 12 shevat 5781 Confusion. Time.

Alienation. Time.

Time passing.

Memory.

What will be remembered? What will we forget?

A year of COVID-19 passed.

COVID-21 firmly rooted in the era of The Vaccine.

Will you get it?

Will there be enough?

Soon? In Time.

Which of the times are these?

Some of what is gone will never be back.

Much of what is gone will point to what we can live without.

Next time.

This time will be better.

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Peninnah Schram In mid-January 2020, I purchased my annual flight to Israel to be there during Pesach with my daughter, my son-in-law, and my three Sabra grandchildren.

However, by the beginning of March, I realized that it would be foolhardy to make that trip, even if I would be allowed to go. Reality hit me about then. So I canceled the flight. I realized I was living in a suspended-time of tension and dread. There was no escape. It was a “No Exit” feeling. I remember feeling scared about becoming ill with that virus and even dying, being of that age of an elder. I cannot describe the deep surreal feelings that came over me, and I shivered.

It was at that time, I found out that one of my dearest friends had gotten Covid-19. We had shared so many experiences and celebrations for the past 60 years. No one but the nurse was with her at the end.

All through the years, crises and celebrations, I kept my mantra close to my heart: “Gam Zeh Ya’avor”: This Too Shall Pass. For years I was telling the King Solomon legend about the king sending his friend and adviser Benaiah to find a magic ring that would make a sad man happy and a happy man sad. While Solomon knew it was a “fool’s errand,” Benaiah took it seriously and would never fail his great friend.

After a month of searching, Benaiah finally found a jeweler who took this request seriously and engraved a gold ring with the gimel, zayin, yud. When Benaiah brought that ring to the king, Solomon saw Benaiah and he was ready to laugh and confess that this had been only a “fool’s errand.” But when he saw the ring, Solomon grew somber and said: “I now realize that all my great wisdom and power is only for the moment. One day another will sit on my throne.”

This mantra always brought me perspective and patience through great and small experiences of fear, pain, loneliness, and so much more. Now, when I yearn to visit my children in Israel and my children in Philadelphia, we fear to take that risk. And so we phone each other a lot and Zoom/Skype occasionally. I tell stories online to my young grandchildren in Philly and I hear them playing musical instruments and see their art work. However, virtual hugs cannot take the place of physical embraces.

My daughter-in-law, Sonia Gordon-Walinsky, is a calligrapher/Jewish artist who knew about my mantra.

She made an art piece with my mantra as a gift. I keep it on my piano so I see it many times a day and think of it a lot—and speak it out loud—hoping that this pandemic will “pass” NOW and that we can remain healthy when we return hopefully to a healthier world. G-d willing! May it come to pass.

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Rabbis: J. Rolando Matalon Felicia L. Sol Rebecca Weintraub

Hazzan: Ari Priven Executive Director: Colin A. Weil

Community House 270 West 89th Street New York, NY 10024-1705

Tel: (212) 787-7600 Fax: (212) 496-7600 Online: www.bj.org