I don't know where this week went. I would say it flew by but it didn't fly. It crawled at a snail’s pace and still I don’t know where it went.
My world is smaller this week. I am under quarantine because my husband came back from Israel, sampling the local air at several airports around the world. Over the time of this shelter-in-place, I've had more mobility and direct human interaction than many, because I've been isolating with my co-parents and our kids and my brothers-in-law. So I've been able to move among these people, and the various structures that we live in.
But now Oren and I are limited to our little house and each other. The universe is about 600 square feet. The house throbs with life, but compacted down. The air is denser than it was a week ago.
And everything is within reach. The pots the pans the spatulas the joy the sadness the uncertainty the longing the remote the wine.
Everything is right at my fingertips: ideas, words, fatigue, food, excitement, silence. I am afloat in the warm viscous waters of a life condensed. It makes stepping out of the house awkward, as if I am on gangly and unsteady legs, subjected to gravity for the first time.
There is much to be said for some of the elements of this quieter and more contained life. There are pieces I want to remember and bring with me when we are finally able to move freely about the cabin. But I also know that this isolation, no matter how pleasant parts of it may be, is something we will all need to reckon with over time.
Because there is injury in going so long not touching and not being touched! Noticing and having to ignore the skin’s desire to feel skin, our bones’ desire to be pressed in an embrace. Even those of us who are isolated with a loved one have lost fully natural touch. There is a moment of almost unconscious calculation. Where have I been? Where has he been? Who was there and were they wearing masks?
Isolation also brings acute damage. My neighbor and friend Richard died last Friday. He had been hospitalized for most of the last two months. His husband was not allowed to be physically with him during these hospitalizations and couldn’t be with him at his death. And while this pandemic has not so much reminded of the AIDS epidemic in the way it has for some others, this turn of events threw me back to the 1980s, remembering lovers who were barred from hospital rooms because they weren’t legal family. I felt that wound reopen this week since Richard’s death; the hurt and the outrage of it. And even though we know the reasons for these separations, we understand and endorse them, my gut cannot bear the indignity. My gut that tells me that if you are a gay man of a certain age and you survived that horrible time, you deserve a better goodbye now. You deserve to be embraced at your death – and your widower deserves to be embraced after that – in loving, non-metaphorical arms.
This is an isolation-inflicted cruelty that will take time to recover from. Not a purposeful cruelty, but cruel nonetheless.
And still, we hang in with the lockdown, now on Day 45, and the curveballs it throws us. We do it for love. We stay home out of love. We lovingly keep others safe as we keep ourselves safe. Doing so is a vivid and ongoing embodiment of Torah's most important teaching, a teaching that makes its home in tomorrow's Torah portion :
ואהבת לרעך כמוך
V’ahavta l’reyakha kamokha. [Leviticus 19:18]
“Love your fellow as yourself.” Treat others how you would be treated. Keep from breathing on others the way you would like not to be breathed on. Keep others from the harm you wish to be kept from.
It is not easy. The benefits we gain and confer by not gathering are abstract. Flattening a curve just doesn't have the warmth of a hug. But still we do it. Even when official restrictions begin to lift, our continued restraint will be a continued act of love.
The verse of Torah continues: v'ahavta l'reyakha kamokha – ani Adonai. Love your fellow as yourself; for I am God. That is – our loving each other is God. Our loving each other is Divine. This love is beyond the day-to-day. It lives in the specific and in the abstract; on earth and in heaven, crossing all worlds. And so we stay home, as an expression of Divine love.
And in the meantime, stuck at home, all we can do is continue learning how to find delight in the density of our spaces. To turn them into holy tents. To open to all that is there (look around now!) – the sights and smells. The comforts and the quirks. To open to the seen and the unseen moving there. For instance, my friend Richard – his neshomeh or maybe just his memory – has also been crowding into our quarantine this week, roaming the house, bending down to peer into my Zoom screen, whispering punchlines of jokes in my ear. So welcome those visitors visiting from other planes, where masks are not required, and the love that comes – even imperfectly – through Zoom screens.
And when we're hungry for hugs, we can remember Song of Songs, the love poems of ancient Israel that we are told are allegory for our relationship with the Divine. And we can feel the sensation of Divine embrace. Even now, in this very moment, we can open to the sensation:
שְׂמֹאלוֹ תָּחַת רֹאשִׁי וִימִינוֹ תְּחַבְּקֵנִי
Smolo tachat roshi vimino t'chabkeni. I feel the left hand of the Divine under my head, and the Divine Beloved’s right hand reaching over me and around me, drawing me close.
Feel that sensation. And hold onto it – as a Divine rehearsal, until we can all next touch.
Other Reflections During the COVID-19 Pandemic:
Koved – Virus and Humanity
In this moment of unfolding epidemic, I am called to honor the complexity of the Creation we live in. This Creation in which uncountable species compete for space and survival, including the tiniest ones, who can sometimes, without malice, take down the mightiest among us. (March 6.) Click here.
By Our Own Hands (Vayakhel in Quarantine)
Whatever is ahead, the best of it will come from the people. We, the people, whose inspired ideas and skilled fingers will concoct new ways of being together, new ways of being, period. (March 21.) Click here.
A Planet of Priests
Torah tells us that we are meant to be a nation of priests. It is our calling and our destiny. And now the call is even broader. Because right now we are being called to be a Planet of Priests. Each of us tending the altar of our relationships with God and Earth and each other. Offering up our guilt over the profit-driven, Earth-consuming culture we have allowed to take root. And offering up like fragrant incense our gratitude for the simple and intimate gifts of connection and food and shelter. (March 28.) Click here.
The Mood that Came to Dinner
Anxiety has moved right into my house, camped out in my own living room! Leering at me with its purple face and lime green 1970s pants. And what do you do about an unwanted guest? (April 3.) Click here.
You’ve Got Mail
Talmud says a dream uninterpreted is like a letter left unread. What does this if-only-it-were-a-dream time have to say to us? (April 10.) Click here.
Through the Lattice
The doe sauntered away, leaving me wondering how we got here. Our glorious, sorry species. How did we end up living this way? So far removed from the rest of Creation that is just outside our door? How did we end up seeing this Earth so imperfectly, as if through carnival glass? (April 24.) Click here.