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Tag : isolation
October 12, 2020 by Rishe Groner
Reflections on Sukkot During the Coronavirus
So.
I don’t know about you, but I never thought we’d be here.
Saying goodbye to Sukkot, the grand festival of rejoicing, the time when we celebrate harvest, honor abundance, and pray for the rains to come.
And yet, we are. still. in. this. mess.
Last week, I walked the eerily empty streets of Jerusalem. It was an evening that would otherwise be packed with shoppers, tourists, visitors, hawkers, strangers, every kind of colorful human. There would be people buying their palm-branch-and-citron Lulav and Etrog sets from outdoor markets while tourists enjoy a late-night ice cream or beer and outdoor buskers strum their music to contribute to the overall din of joy.
Instead, there were just a few of us, approaching the stray stalls that were open to sell the season’s necessities, a sukkah plank here, a Lulav there; while the produce stands tried to get rid of their last vegetables and the buses stopped running at 9pm. It was dystopian, it was sad, it was infuriating.
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August 10, 2020 by Elana Rebitzer
Countering Isolation with Poetry
Over the last few months, I have found myself attending fewer and fewer of the Zoom live-streamed events that keep popping up on my Facebook page. What at first seemed like an exciting way to connect to new and old faces in the age of social distancing has started to feel like more of a chore, a less-than-pleasant activity to be avoided whenever possible. Time and time again, I exit these Zoom events feeling even more isolated than before.
“Poetry in Times of Peril,” presented by Hebrew College-Interfaith Youth Core PsalmSeason project, with co-sponsors Jewish Women’s Archive and Lilith magazine, could have added to that feeling of isolation. Instead, it addressed those feelings of isolation head-on, and as a result, actually left me feeling more connected to the rest of the world.
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April 23, 2020 by Rachel Fadem
Mourning During a Period of Self-Isolation
My online college class was interrupted with three missed calls from my father, two from my mother, and a supplemental set of urgent texts saying “call me ASAP.”
I knew without even calling back that my maternal grandmother had passed. I called my parents to see when I would have to fly to Houston to attend the funeral. I had just been kicked out of school because of the coronavirus and wanted to make sure I had all I’d need to continue my schooling from Houston, where my grandmother had been living.
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