The Calm Before The Storm…Before The Calm

September 29th, 2019 – Rosh Hashana, the head of the new year for Jews all over the world. A day that commenced with hopes and dreams of a better year to come for many and the best year to come for all.

October 8th, 2019. Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, a day when Jews all around the globe drop whatever they are doing and head to their holy shuls to cry, pray, and pour their hearts out in hopes of shedding their mistakes and flaws to begin a fresh new year in purity.

November 5th, 2019 – Happy Birthday to me

December 31st, 2019 – The World Health Organization country office in china received reports that a new coronavirus strain had been identified by Chinese researchers in connection with a pneumonia like illness based in New Han City, China.

Post January 1st – the world as we knew it began to change in a very scary way and yet we had no inkling of what was about to come.

It’s scary to consider the fact that China had only gotten word about the new virus strain in late December, which means that the virus had begun a reasonable time period prior to that. Considering that it would have to take a reasonable amount of time for the virus to take its course before being identified as a threat, I would not be shocked to learn that its conception occurred during or after the high holidays. Regardless of the exact timing, it is scary to consider that a brand-new year filled with hope and dreams for the Jewish people and an anticipated new year of 2020, had been destined to become a tragic sequence of events rooted in a virus nobody was prepared for.

When I was a kid, I remember watching a show in the early 90s called “Beyond 2000” where things that we take for granted now and didn’t exist then were predicted to become reality in the new millennium. Many of the inventions and advances discussed were predicted to be in effect by the year 2020, a long time away from watching it on square tube in the early part of the 90s. I remember thinking how amazingly different and easier life will be whenever we make it to 2020, which back then seemed like forever. Just a few days ago, I received a funny yet suggestive quote that said, “I think we can all agree that in 2015, not a single person got the answer correct to ‘where do you see yourself in 5 years from now.’” Nothing more Emet than that! We all know by now that when we plan, G-d laughs.

August 21st, 2020 – Elul. The very last month of the year commences. We have just entered a period where our efforts to pray, cry, apologize, and re-organize our lives from what they are now to where we want to be, is taken up a notch. While we cannot accomplish it all in a month, it can certainly help us shed the trash we don’t want to be associated with, come Tishrei. We were calm back in Elul 5779 and we felt pretty good as 2019 ended. Then the storm hit, one that no meteorologist was able to predict. And just like in a major storm, we ran indoors and stayed there. A few days turned into a few weeks. Now, several months later, just a short period of time before Elul hits, a long-awaited calm has come over us yet again as we are just getting used to stepping and staying out. The question now becomes, where to go? To the beach? To the movies? The gym or the pool? Maybe the Beit Midrash and our shul? How about work and school? All these ideas have their place and time. Yet, for us to capture this time of year as OURS, one that will steer 5781 in the right direction, we need a place to go that remains constant. I believe that place starts and ends within. Because as we clear the wreckage of our past, the path ahead becomes a limitless one. Baseless hatred didn’t consider the who and the what. No matter who one was, sinat chinam brought us to our knees. COVID did the very same. It destroyed good people and bad. Black people and white. People who were at peace and people who opted to fight. Oftentimes, the best way to beat the enemy is at his own game, in the opposite direction. We are asked to be nice and cordial, to pray and to learn. We are asked to admit fault when we are wrong and forgive those who do the same in turn. This time of year, these “requests” are intensified.

Pirkei Avot teaches us that the world stands on 3 pillars. Each year we begin Elul almost immediately after we mourn the destruction of our communal source of connection with a Power greater than the worst evil out there. Even so, we have yet to bring the geulah in our time. If COVID-19 was that extra “pillar” of motivation we needed to push ourselves over the edge and into a year where Mashiach will finally reveal himself, then the silver lining quote suddenly doesn’t seem so corny. Growth takes place in the arena. As we walk out of our comfort zone and head back out into this topsy-turvy world, let us be the heroes we have been waiting for all this time. Doing so in Achdut will make our jobs that much easier.

(This article is dedicated L’ilui Nishmat my dear mother in law, Esther Rivka bat Shalom)