I am working my way out from under many dozen emails from Jewish organizations expressing their solidarity with the hostages who were held in the TX synagogue on Shabbat. While being happy that the hostages are safe, and not feeling particularly bad about the perp being safely in the ground, I am perplexed by the need for every Jewish organization to feel like it needs to issue a statement that it surely knows will say the same things that all the others are saying. Is it the need for relevancy? Would anyone ask why their favorite organization hadn’t issued one of those statements? Wasn’t it better in the old days when organizations would have to consider the value of sending out a physical letter of support for the hostages when they knew it might not be received before the situation was resolved one way or another, and so they didn’t bother to fill our mailboxes? There is no going back to the old days, but forgive my nostalgia.
Here is what I wanted to say before all that transpired. There was a death in the family of a colleague. Here is the shivah information that his shul posted: “Shivah information is listed below, including Zoom links and in-person shivah details. The in-person shivah, at specific times, along with the in-person minyanim are in the social hall at Beth Sholom (354 Maitland Ave., Teaneck, NJ 07666), which accommodates social distancing. One has to be fully vaccinated and wearing either a (K)N-95 mask or double-masked to enter the Beth Sholom building.”
While there is nothing earth-shattering about this posting, for me it was a sad commentary on the really challenging reality of the never-ending pandemic. Who would have thought, almost two years later, that we would still be in semi-lockdown with more infections than ever?
Which brings me to a new approach to keeping my sanity in these difficult times. “This too will pass,” as you may recall, has been my mantra but it isn’t working so well lately. A different colleague, Lizz Goldstein, feeling the tensions from not being able to move on from the pandemic, pointed me to a line from the controversial play “Indecent” by Paula Vogel. You know the expression “Rome is burning?” It has become a metaphor for occupying oneself with unimportant matters while neglecting priorities at a time of crisis. Well, Paula Vogel takes it in a different direction. She says simply that “Rome is always burning.” I find this to actually be a comforting phrase, even if dark. Whenever wanting to put out the fires of the world feels overwhelming, as it does for many of us at this time, sometimes it helps to acknowledge that the world is beyond our saving alone. And while this pandemic and other worries may shift to something less scary and more known, next year there will surely be a different “Rome burning.”
We can’t give up on trying to fix the world nor on hoping for better days, but it may help to keep a sense that all our problems are not going to disappear. There are going to be fires and not enough extinguishers to rid us of them all. That knowledge, and acceptance, can provide some of the perspective and need for patience that we are looking for in this very challenging time.
Let me know if this or other approaches are helpful for you. Stay well and keep the faith. Bill Rudolph
It Used To Be Wednesday 