…come out of this quarantine?” asked the JMU Journalism student who interviewed me last week. He was speaking with religious leaders as to how the current situation was impacting faith communities and their spiritual leaders. It was a good question, and I had to think for a moment.
“Yes, there were actually a few good things,” and with that I told him about how people in our virtual seder and others about which I heard were able to gather family members and friends they may not have had “sitting” around their seder tables. Zoom made it possible for those near and far to share maybe not physical closeness but surely the spirit of the holiday and the chance to talk. In fact, perhaps tonight at our virtual service there will be loved ones you invite, friends Jewish and otherwise, and categories of people I haven’t mentioned. The combinations seem endless!
“And,” I told him, “I ‘met’ some folks I hadn’t met in the months I had physically been in Harrisonburg.” I was thinking about my 37 years in Wilmington, in a congregation of over 700 families. Surely I had met most of them, but I know there were a few who paid their dues just to support the institution but whose children were out of religious school, whose kids have married, who do not attend worship, and along the path of life I’ve never had the chance to really talk with them for one reason or another.
This is true in Beth El Congregation as well regarding the phone calls I made to the membership. There are congregants who must not read the Bridge or the eBlasts…. who never heard of me, who thought I was still a rabbinic student (Ahhhhhhhh!), who believed I lived in the community, etc. It was a pleasure to make their acquaintance – and to set them straight – and to get to know something about them. “This,” I told my JMU friend, “was a true bonus, something good that has come out of the quarantine.”
Then I thought some more, and added, “And there were others who had met me, who came to worship either regularly or occasionally, but in the course of a minute here, a half-hour there, our connection was often superficial.” It’s not that our phone conversations were lengthy (sorry, but even though it’s not a long membership list, its length still prevents me from shooting the breeze for a long time), but on numerous occasions I think we learned a great deal more about each other than we would have otherwise.
So, while it is true that these conditions are not satisfactory – heck, they stink! – something good has come out of them, at least after a month. God-willing we won’t have to live like this much longer.
La-b’ree-yoot T O H E A L T H! L’Chaim. T O L I F E!
(So, did you hear about Rachel who divorced her bagel maker husband and then married a poet? She went from batter to verse)