Times sure have changed, eh? If a psychic had predicted the future and described the way our lives would be rearranged so suddenly, I never would have believed them.
I saw an article headline on Facebook about how being at home all the time is an introvert’s dream. Um, no. Being able to recharge away from people would be living the dream. I did let myself imagine just for a minute how enjoyable it would be if I could spend hours and hours and hours immersing myself in my books and art and online classes, but then I stopped torturing myself. It is what it is.
I started this self-quarantine last week when Sweet Girl got strep throat. Even more needy when she’s sick than on normal days, she and I were together for 72 hours non-stop. I am thankful that she’s on the mend, but for me, I have felt like I’m being crowded. I am accustomed to alone/quiet time so I am really trying to enforce a new routine where I have some solitude, but it’s very difficult for my daughter to get used to. Still, a week in, we have all realized how much more pleasant our days are when mommy has alone time to recharge.
Is there a lesson here???
So. I’ve been searching for the lessons in our current situation. Interestingly, at the very beginning of this past Shabbat’s Torah portion, Ki Tisa, we read about the commandment to “wash hands and feet with water and not die,” a timely reminder to wash our hands!
The parsha starts with a description of how to take a census of the people (also timely). Everyone is to give a half-shekel by proxy “so that there will not be a plague among them when counting them.” In this way, substituting coins for people, we can avoid a pandemic. I have also heard that it was done that way so as not to ignore the individuality of each person, just counting each one after another. Rather, each person is unique unto themselves and there is no one like them.
Is it a coincidence that we read this parsha a week ago? How about today’s page of Talmud in Daf Yomi that discusses pure and impure ritual water? You really have to wonder! Maybe I’m looking through a particular coronavirus lens, but it is still strikingly relevant.
The current virus does not differentiate between us… No nationality, gender, or social status is immune. (There’s a big lesson for humanity here as well.) A plague is a manifestation of people not being differentiated as individuals. The Torah tells us that to avoid this, we must recognize the value and worth of each individual. In the parsha, if one person were not counted, that would have been a little less money with which to buy the sacrifices needed for the Tabernacle.
When we recognize that each person is his own unique world, we act in a way opposite of how a virus does, which blindly attacks any human and every human. In the parsha, we see that we shouldn’t treat the people as all the same. To avoid the plague, we treat each person as something of tremendous and unique value and we recognize that each individual is needed to foster our relationship that we have with God. Every human who is alive today was created because he/she is needed. And yet look what can happen when we don’t recognize the value of each individual. We even say that “to save a life is to save the world.” That’s why I haven’t left my house.
It’s troubling to me to look at the numbers and statistics of who has contracted this virus, who has recovered, who has been and has not yet been tested. When we look at the big picture like that and try to see some kind of a spreading trend, we are not viewing each fellow human as someone of tremendous individual value. We are separating ourselves to preserve life, of course, but let’s not separate ourselves from understanding what it may be like to be in China or in Italy on lockdown, or to be someone in a hospital bed with difficulty breathing, cut off from the people around them.
The point is not to rid oneself of struggle, but to accept it as a condition of being human.
Rebbe Nachman of Bratzlav
A dose of humility
The world has changed in gigantic ways by the tiniest little virus, a virus that is invisible to our eyes. We humans have been handed a dose of humility in this. The entire world has been altered… we humans are so fragile that the tiniest of microbes can upend our world.
A common Jewish teaching is that for every physical aspect of our world there is a spiritual component that is unseen. We believe there is an entire other world that matters much more than this one and that we can’t see.
Let us not get too prideful in our scientific or technological abilities that we think we are in charge here. There are always things that we cannot see but that may matter more than what we can visualize.
The lesson is personal
One of my teachers recently mentioned that we must find the lesson in the current situation that is unique to us. What is it that I am meant to learn from this? Well, I’m not entirely sure about that yet, but I think it has something to do with appreciating the many gifts that I have. It might have a hand in finding a new way to balance both “me time” and togetherness with my family.
What are you learning?
