Perspective

As we approach Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Memorial Day, I've been thinking a lot about how our generation is dealing with the crisis we find ourselves in in contrast to the experiences of our parents, grandparents or even great-grandparents' generations.

My mother's early childhood was air raids on London, evacuation to various locations around England, often just her and her mother because for part of the war her father, grandmother and other relatives were interned on the Isle of Man because they were "enemy aliens" (mostly Jews with Austrian, German or Italian citizenship).

Meanwhile her uncle was risking his life nightly as an air raid warden and volunteer firefighter while her aunt was deemed essential personal running the family dressmaking business which throughout the war manufactured uniforms instead, located in the heart of London all through the bombing onslaught of the Blitz and later the rockets and flying bombs.

Twice my mother and her mother were evicted from the room they were renting as evacuees. My British educated grandmother with her blue eyes could pass for being a gentile during their evacuation to Oxford. But when my east European grandfather was finally released from detention and allowed to visit his wife and the daughter he had never met before, the landlady heard his foreign accent, saw his Jewish looking appearance and told my grandmother that Jews were not allowed. They had to leave, roaming from place to place trying to find refuge from the bombs.

A few months later my grandfather again received permission to visit his wife and daughter, this time in a rural area of northern England, and once again, when the landlord heard his foreign accent and saw his Jewish appearance the family were forced to leave.

Of course this doesn't compare with the ravages of the Holocaust that decimated most of the family who stayed in continental Europe, most of whom were murdered with by the Nazis or their anti-Semitic neighbours. My grandmother, in all other ways a British patriot, always said it terrified her to think of how people would have behaved towards British Jews had Hitler conquered Britain.

I grew up on the stories of the rationing, the make do and mend, the improvised bomb shelter my great-uncle and grandfather built in the garden of the house they shared in London.

Even as a child of the 70s and 80s I remember still walking past derelict bomb sites in some parts of London, the excitement at the Barbican project built on one such site. The shadow over the war hung over everything not in a depressing way, but just as perspective on how lucky I was to be a child in a Western country in my generation.

It was the same message I absorbed from the demonstrations we attended on behalf of Soviet Jewry and dissidents behind the Iron Curtain. There but for the grace of God go I. Know that what you have may be fleeting, know to be thankful, know that because you got lucky you have a responsibility to campaign for those trapped under the Soviet jackboot and elsewhere.

As an adult in Israel there have been times I've had to take my own children to the shelter because we have been targeted by rockets just as my mother and her family were in London in 1944-45. Times when we've had to stay home because of the risk of being caught in the open. Times when I was taking my life in my hands taking buses in to work or study in Jerusalem. Thankfully those times have been very rare, but they've happened and still it pales in comparison with what my mother and so many of her generation experienced in wartime England, especially London.

The situation now is maybe more complicated than a war against flesh and blood. We still don't know exactly what we are up against. Our post-war generations have mostly been lucky, living in some of the most prosperous and peaceful times in human history (yes, even with the awful events that the world has witnessed in the last 70 years). This virus is killing and maiming thousand around the world today, the Jewish community in many places is especially hard hit and we all know so many who are ill or who succumbed.

Being cooped up is hard. People have lost their jobs while others are in fear of joining the unemployed, struggling to work from home with kids underfoot or sick relatives to care for. Some began this situation in poverty, others have had it thrust upon them out of the blue. Some are essential workers forced to isolate from their families to keep them safe. So much hardship, so much tragedy, I am by no means making light of what is happening around us in this covid19 crisis.

But sometimes this is life. As we read in the Haggadah, in every generation someone tries to wipe us out, anti-Semitism, wars, pogroms and yes, sometimes faceless plagues. In some ways this is more normal than the level of comfort and safety even poorer parts of Western society have lived in in recent decades, in comparison with the privation of even many more affluent people in previous generations.

I seem to use this word a lot, but yes, so much depends on perspective. It's easy to cast aspersions on generations X, Y and Z, even the "boomers" as being spoilt, "soft" and self-centred, and I think that would be unfair. We are simply generations who got lucky, for the most part most of us did not need to call up those reserves that got our ancestors through cycles of famine, war, rationing, economic collapse, outbreaks of disease, persecution and privation.

We have those reserves though, it's in our DNA to know how to cope, to adapt, to innovate and work through this Twilight Zone situation we find ourselves in. Call it genetic memory hardwired in to our humanity. We can do this, whether it's finding ways to stay home and take precautions or creative solutions for a practical but safer new normal. It may take us time, it will require patience and a very solid dose of good humour and a sense of the ridiculous and of adventure.

Life throws us curve balls, it just does. Sometimes the shocks are annoying, sometimes they are life altering. The current one is of epic proportions. We aren't the first and assuming the aliens don't show up to harvest humans for their home planet, we won't be the last.

Take care, be sensible, don't lose sight of the big picture, vent to your friends over social media or the old fashioned telephone when you need to get out your frustrations, listen to your friends and family who need a sounding board to hear those tirades. Reach out to lend a helping hand to those worse of then you. When you are feeling so down and suffocated by this crisis look around and find someone else you can do a favour for. When you need help don't be afraid to ask. Love, support and keep looking out for that light at the end of the tunnel. There are so many capable good people out there working on finding it.

Telling the time in blossoms

You can just make out the swings in the park in the valley below us. This playground is usually busy, even with rain clouds threatening it should be crowded with children enjoying the Passover vacation.

It has been empty for weeks now.

On the first night of Passover people came out on to their balconies at 20:30 to sing holiday songs together. Across the valley we could hear people shouting festive greetings and someone was twirling a rainbow LED hula hoop.

I'm glad my neighbour's trees partly obscure the view so that we can enjoy nature even while stuck at home. We do a lot of birdwatching from our window. This spring we have seen magnificent flocks of cranes, storks and assorted raptors migrating between Africa, the Middle East and Europe.

The trees help us to tell time. We began isolating when the neighbours' peach tree was starting to bloom, watching it reach peak pink blossoms which as the weeks passed have turned to tiny baby peaches.

Today I noticed that the olive tree you see in the photo has just begun to sport some tiny olive fruitlets. We wonder what the world will be like by the late autumn when the olives start to ripen.

None of you shall exit the door of their home until morning.

On the one hand it is ironic that here in Israel the entire country will spend Pesah, the festival of freedom, on lockdown, forbidden even to leave our homes as a precaution to prevent those who despite the situation might otherwise try to gather with family and friends for the festive seder meal on the first night.

And yet staying put in our homes with our immediate families is exactly what God commanded our ancestors on the very first Passover before He led them out of slavery in Egypt, as it is described in the book of Exodus:

וּלְקַחְתֶּ֞ם אֲגֻדַּ֣ת אֵז֗וֹב וּטְבַלְתֶּם֮ בַּדָּ֣ם אֲשֶׁר־בַּסַּף֒ וְהִגַּעְתֶּ֤ם אֶל־הַמַּשְׁקוֹף֙ וְאֶל־שְׁתֵּ֣י הַמְּזוּזֹ֔ת מִן־הַדָּ֖ם אֲשֶׁ֣ר בַּסָּ֑ף וְאַתֶּ֗ם לֹ֥א תֵצְא֛וּ אִ֥ישׁ מִפֶּֽתַח־בֵּית֖וֹ עַד־בֹּֽקֶר׃

And you shall take a bunch of hyssop, and dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and strike the lintel and the two doorposts with the blood that is in the basin; and none of you shall exit the door of their home until morning.

Of all the Jewish holidays, Pesah is the one most focused on the home and the family. The key commemoration is not a public event like the Yom Kippur service, not a public declaration of the miracle, like the lighting of the Hannukiah in the window, not building a hut in our gardens or parading with the lulav in shul or loudly blowing the shofar.

Even in the time of the Temple in Jerusalem, the pascal lamb sacrifice, a key Pesah mitzva at that time, was something to be done as a family unit, maximum a large extended family or a few families together, but at its heart it was a commemoration celebrated in private, at home or in the temporary lodgings where pilgrims to Jerusalem were staying.

Of all the Jewish festivals to have to fall during this time of isolation and lockdown there is something fitting about this crisis happening over Pesah.

The pandemic is forcing us to go back to basics, to focus on one of the fundamental messages of Pesah, the strength of family in the face of a tyrannical regime, the strength of family during times of extreme hardship and fear. The family drawing in on itself behind closed doors to find solace and inspiration while plague and uncertainty rage outside.

Today of course most of us live in nuclear family units rather than with or even close to our extended families. The dangers of this contagion mean that we are forced to hunker down without our parents or grandparents, to keep them sequestered alone for their own safety. It runs counter to everything in our culture, but we have no choice. This seder will truly be different from all other seder nights.

Pesah is a festival on which we not only remember the suffering of our ancestors, remembering the commandment that we must all consider ourselves as actually having gone from slavery to freedom, to tell the story not just as a fable or an episode of history, but with profound empathy as though we ourselves had experienced those horrific times, to feel as though we were slaves in ancient Egypt, just as our ancestors were, facing their trials and tribulations.

It is also a holiday on which we remember many miracles within nature, the plagues which Hashem brought down on Egypt and the splitting of the Red Sea. In modern times we try to understand these through science, how a certain wind blowing could cause the sea to part, or a volanic eruption might have caused clouds of dust and ash which plunged the region in to darkness.

Explaining miracles through science does nothing to diminish them, we believe that Hashem created the world and all that is in it, including the laws of nature.

This Pesah we pray that Hashem will guide our dedicated scientists, doctors and researchers to find a cure for the plague now sweeping the globe. We hope that there will be a new life saving Passover miracle this year that will enable the whole world to go from fear to freedom, from sickness to health, from isolation to togetherness.

What if you had never seen a disaster film?

Just for perspective, how many people here have seen at least one disaster film? I'm guessing most of us. If it was Contagion or Outbreak or any number of similar pandemic films, or films about other natural disasters, volcanoes, earthquakes, towering inferno, 9/11, alien invasions - too many to choose from.

We have some kind of imprint in our minds, however vague, of what something like this might look like. The medical professionals in protective gear, people in masks, empty streets, people isolated in their homes, everything closed, ordinary life turning on a dime in to a completely different existence.

And yes, I'm sure when many of us first heard about measures against covid19 it seemed unreal, like a movie, like something out of one of these films or science fiction, but still, we had this idea implanted in our brains that something like this could happen, however highly unlikely.

Now imagine that you had grown up without ever having seen a film. You never saw the news footage of 9/11 or Katerina in New Orleans or virus outbreaks in Africa and China. You may never even have heard of any of those, let alone seen them. You haven't read science fiction or disaster fiction.

In short you don't have that concept already there on the fringes of your awareness, those images, those storylines. That tiny bit of preparedness other people have absorbed from popular culture and the odd news report, even if they weren't actively following Bill Gates' TED talk on the subject or other warnings from epidemiologists and other scientists which have from time to time made the news.

Then boom, one day you are told that plague has struck, everyone has to go in to lockdown in their homes, no more shul, no more big weddings or funerals, no guests, no social gatherings, businesses and schools must close. How would you respond? It is so wild, so utterly out there that your response would likely be disbelief, suspicion, it makes no sense.

You wouldn't have that modicum of preparedness, nothing to equip you with the idea that this was it, fiction come to life, an epidemic from a distant corner of the globe landed right here at home. You wouldn't have that awareness to help you absorb the facts and adjust your understanding of reality.

I am quite sure that this has affected how the most traditional and insular communities have handled this outbreak, why many have been so slow to react, so slow to understand the severity of what is happening.

And yes, we may all yet suffer the consequences, but I think it's important that we try to put ourselves in their shoes and understand why they have responded as they have, and in doing so find constructive and effective ways to change their behaviour and in doing so protect and save us all.

In search of a destination

We are still in the adjustment phase, learning, adapting, trying to process this strange new world. We are used to having this neat long term perspective on our lives, a fixed rhythm of holidays, school dates, tax deadlines and sporting events. With all of that suddenly cancelled it can feel a lot as though our path is now devoid of signposts, that what is is now is what will always be with no horizon or destination.

There is a destination though, we just don't know how far or exactly what it will take to get there. We live in hope that sooner or later there will be a cure, an effective treatment, a vaccine - something that will allow us to return to our former lives.

My guess is they won't quite be the way they were, I don't think the world can go through a cataclysmic event like this and remain unchanged, but until we're there we won't know entirely what the post-covid 19 world will look like, how similar to our past existence, what changes might be permanent, what will be slight course corrections.

Bottom line though is that most of this is out of our hands. It might be weeks, months, more. It might be a blip in our routines, it might change our societies forever. But right now that is all beyond us.

Right now our worlds have shrunk to our here and now at home and our horizon isn't planning next year's summer break with the kids or a visit with the grandparents but the coming week's meal plan and juggling the logistics of WFH and a gaggle of kids.

If you are a natural planner think short term, sort out your kitchen, work out what stock you have and how long you can manage between grocery runs, re-organise your house - pick all sorts of short term jobs that let you indulge that planning instinct and help you to feel busy and useful in the face of so many things you can't control or influence. Feather your nest, spruce up your "castle", plan things you can control and can make a difference in.

If you are handy sew masks for a local hospital or raise funds to help with purchasing the sort of vital protective gear so many otherwise developed nations seem woefully short of. Plant a vegetable patch, at once something to do with your kids and something to ease the stress of going out to the shops. Working the soil soothes the soul and helps to adjust our focus on the world. Phone some elderly relatives or neighbours shut in for their own protection. Find ways to make a difference, however small, helping yourself by helping others.

I hope these suggestions help you to find some peace and calm in the uncertainty of our global predicament. These are just some suggestions off the top of my head, by no means a one size fits all recommendation. Above all we need patience and perspective to weather this one out, take each day as it comes.

Hummous

Truly the apocalypse must be near because my DH asked for dinner suggestions and I said why not rustle up some hummous in the blender. So he did.

So far so normal.

But then a curious thing happened. He TASTED the hummous. He spread some on a cucumber and not only did he like it, he said it was, and I quote: "incredible, downed it whole".


My DH who has hated hummous his entire life, would never taste my homemade hummous or restaurant hummous or supermarket container hummous tasted hummous. And loved it.

Aharit hayamim.

There was also roast beets with feta, veggie sticks, leftover red (tomato-veg) soup, homemade wholewheat bread, fresh fruit smoothies and of course, homemade hummous.

While you are home with your children

I'm seeing a ton of people who are suffering anxiety and feeling overwhelmed by all the school assignments, the schedules, the charts, the game plans. Folks, breathe.

Yes, for some people that degree of organisation, school at home as it were, works great, and good luck to them.

Everyone is different though and there are many ways to homeschool, including unschooling and experiential learning. Don't feel that just because a lot of people seem to be doing it one way, you have to as well.

Everyone is adjusting to a radically new situation. You and your children need time to adjust and process what is happening too. Some people are great at just slipping in to this new reality. Many people are going to need time to figure out what works for their family.

Many kids need time to decompress from their regular school schedule and ease in to a different type of routine at home, whether that includes simply following their own interests, adhering to distance learning programmes from school or more group family projects you want to work on with your kids.

You might find you have no choice but to allow way more screen time than you normally would, you may find that after a while the kids get bored with screens and decide to get creative of their own initiative.

There is no right way except what helps you and your family get through this unprecedented situation in the healthiest, happiest and most well adjusted way. For each family the formula will be slightly different.

Final point, remember that this is happening all over the world. Your kids are not going to flunk out of life because they may end up missing a few weeks or months or even a year of school. Everyone is in the same boat. "Falling behind" has a very different meaning when most of the world is out of school right now.

If crucial material is missed, well, your kids won't be the only ones missing it. Schools all over are going to have to make adjustments to their own teaching plans, schedules and curriculum when God Willing life is able to get at least somewhat back to normal and schools resume. This isn't what you need to focus on now.

Breathe, do what your family needs to do to keep the home environment as stable and calm as possible while everyone is stuck home together. Be-Ezrat Hashem we will all get through this and come out on the other side with a new perspective on family, life and hopefully plenty of humourous anecdotes too.