Welcoming today’s hopeful transition to a non-COVID world

Joyce Toub, Collier/Lee Hadassah President

Passover has provided many opportunities for reflection, including how we experience the Seder in our youth, as parents, and as grandparents. These points of remembrances are always with us. The overall message — liberation — is loud and clear. Freedom allows us many opportunities; it allows us to serve and that is what Hadassah is all about.

The women I work with model the mitzvah of giving, both of their energy and resources. They strive to be productive and creative, coming up with new ideas to engage and educate. Their efforts have produced our Expanding Horizons series, now extended through June, July and August, to entertain, engage and educate.

The past year marked out COVID-19 time, spending countless hours in front of our computers, longing for the time when we can once again interact face-to-face. We wonder when we can return to our normal lives.

We seem to be in that same moment in history, that is the seven weeks between Passover and Shavuot. These holidays commemorate the Exodus from Egypt and the receiving of the 10 Commandments. It is during this time that we observe Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day), Yom HaZikaron (Israel’s Memorial Day) and Yom HaAzma’ut (Israeli Independence Day). This ended two millennia of Jewish exile.

This transition from slavery to freedom, from sadness to joy is, in a way, what our transition is like today, as we transition from a COVID world to a non-COVID world. Thankfully, we have the knowledge of how to better deal with this pandemic.

In a recent Hadassah Magazine article, Carol Saline’s essay, “COVID-19 and Me,” expresses so much of what many of us are feeling. I, too, make a conscious effort to not be depressed, but the loss of my husband two years ago and the trials my daughter has had to endure through two massive surgeries and a 10-week hospital stay have been difficult.

I am hopeful that everything will turn out for the best for all of us. And I am grateful that the weather is improving up north where many of us will return to communities that have nurtured us for many, many years.