The End of Shloshim

It's been really easy for me to remember when the coronavirus became more than just something that impacted people internationally or on cruise ships. My dad's funeral was on Wednesday, March 11th. That evening, the NBA shut down after Utah Jazz's Rudy Gobert tested positive for COVID-19, Tom Hanks announced that he tested positive in Australia, and Sarah Palin was revealed as the Bear on The Masked Singer. It was truly a surreal day. 

On our drive home from Pittsburgh a few days later, we found out that my kids' schools and my office were going to be closed the following week. I went to my synagogue for Shabbat services on Friday night and Saturday and people really didn't know how to react. There were a few elbow bumps but no handshakes or hugs. This was also before people realized that masks helped. On Sunday evening, we hosted some friends for shiva, part of the week-long mourning period in Judaism, and that was really the last time I spent time with people other than those in my home without social distancing. 

Right around that time, many people around the country started to realize that a lot of things needed to happen online instead of in person and that included religious services. While my own synagogue hosted services online each week on Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, I needed somewhere for the other days of the week.

(Sorry. I've been in the same room as my first grader during his school day for months!)

On that first Monday and Tuesday, I found an online minyan (a quorum of 10 people for a prayer service) in order to say the Mourner's prayer for my dad. I didn't know anyone at that particular synagogue, and it was awkward with everyone trying to figure out how an online service should work. Then, I connected with a friend from college who just happened to be a rabbi. Even though she and her synagogue are several thousand miles and several time zones away, I started joining their minyans. So every day since I got home from the funeral in March, I've attended a minyan between my synagogue and my friend's congregation (with an occasional cameo at my brother's synagogue). While I wrote about much of this way back in June, the period of Shloshim* officially ended for me on Monday. (I also tried to explain what shiva and shloshim are in that post.) Before I get to the thank you portion of this post, I thought I would share some highlights from attending online services every day since March.

- Seeing a guy in his 70s without a shirt while eating breakfast at his kitchen table.

- Witnessing a family perform the Adon Olam prayer/song together to the tune of Backstreet Boys' I Want It That Way. (It was truly awesome!)

- Being able to "attend" a Bar Mitzvah in Arizona while in my own home.

- Attending a B'Not Mitzvah and listening to three girls singing almost magically together.

- Wearing pajama pants for the vast majority of these services. 

- Hearing some variation of "you're on mute," "you need to unmute yourself," or "can everyone mute themselves" probably hundreds of times.

- Watching a recognizable TV personality on the computer screen as he attended the same service as me. He appeared to be wearing a Cleveland Browns sweater. 

(It was not one of the guys in this picture.)

It's amazing that my dad passed away 11 months ago in the Hebrew calendar. Being able to attend these services has really been comforting. With everything going on in my life and in the country during this pandemic, this has been the one consistent part of my life each and every day. I now have two separate communities where I feel welcomed. And yes, it's still a little strange knowing many of these people only via Zoom and never really having one-on-one conversations. I'm not trying to do a silver lining thing here, but I wouldn't have done services during the entire 11-month period every day in normal times. It just wouldn't have been realistic with commuting to and from work, kids activities, and even just driving to services. 

I want to thank my family for being supportive in me doing services the entire time. Thanks to both synagogues for having online minyans during the pandemic. And thanks to you for reading this blog post. 

* Update/Correction: Shloshim in Hebrew means 30, so the 30-day mourning period actually ended in April. There does not seem to be a specific name for the 11-month period for a parent, so I'm using the term incorrectly. Since this has already been published, I'll keep the name, especially since The End of the 11-Month Mourning Period isn't as "catchy" of a title.

A Coronavirus Post

I'm writing this just after midnight Eastern time on Wednesday, July 15th, 2020. As of this date, over 136,000 people have died in the United States due to the coronavirus. I'm not getting into a discussion that COVID-19 is a hoax trying to hurt Trump or that the total number of deaths is inflated or that the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is lying to us like former game show host Chuck Woolery and apparently our president seem to believe (or at least supports this thinking). The people who think this probably aren't reading my blog anyway. I've spent a lot of time over the last few days reading Facebook posts and updates from a friend from high school. Her husband, who is around my age, has been in the hospital for more than a week due to COVID-19. Without sharing his medical information, my friend continuously asks us for our prayers because of the serious nature of his condition. 

The point of this post is not to convince people that this virus is real but to look into the future. How is the next generation going to look at how our country responded during this pandemic? I think they'll be amazed (obviously not in a good way) that people really had "COVID parties." That despite scientific evidence that wearing masks helps stop the spread of the virus, many people continue not to wear masks in public spaces and in businesses and cite freedom and the constitution or something. Just today (well, yesterday), CDC director Robert Redfield (who I always think is the actor when I see his name) said, "I really do believe if the American public all embraced masking now and we really did it, you know, rigorously ... I think if we can get everybody to wear a mask right now, I really do think over the next four to six, eight weeks, we can bring this epidemic under control."  

I'd love for our country to try to test this theory, but we all know that it's not going to happen. For example, over 30 people are currently suing the Western Pennsylvania grocery store chain Giant Eagle for requiring customers to wear masks. (I don't know the merits of the cases, but it seems like the grocery store is offering its customers options to get groceries without entering the store.) 

In 25 or 50 years, people aren't going to believe that some members of the previous generations refused to wear masks. They are also going to be astounded that COVID tests took days if not longer to get results. That the president and Congress gave a one-time "stimulus relief" to people and businesses, though millions of dollars seem to be unaccounted for or went to companies in less need of relief than many, many, many others. (Actually, in 25 or 50 years, people will definitely believe that last one.) I didn't even include the ridiculous statements by some of our leaders that the number of positive coronavirus cases are increasing because there are more tests and that if there weren't these tests, there wouldn't be as many cases. And I'm sure that the number of pregnancies would go down if women didn't have pregnancy tests!  

It's just frustrating living through these times where there's no end in sight. Everything gets politicized. You would think that trying to eliminate the coronavirus and saving lives would be the top priority and something the entire country could rally around together. That's obviously not happening. Just wake me up in 2 and 2 when we have a vaccine because it seems like nothing else is going to flatten the curve or stop the spread! (I realize that there are going to be thousands if not millions of people who won't get a vaccine but that will probably be a separate blog post in 2021.)



Update: I forgot to add this portion when I originally published this blog post.

Occasionally, I think about how our country could have responded better to COVID-19. Many people first really took this virus seriously when Tom Hanks announced that he tested positive and when Rudy Gobert of the Utah Jazz also tested positive followed by the NBA shutting down the league. Although Gobert has said that he still doesn't have his full sense of smell back, many people feel like both and most other recognizable people who contracted COVID-19 fully recovered. I don't follow British politics very closely, but I'm sure the UK realized that COVID-19 was a big deal when Prime Minister Boris Johnson was in the hospital due to this virus. I'm not sure that made much or any impact in the US. I wonder if the country's response would have been different if someone like Senator Rand Paul became really ill and was hospitalized after he tested positive to the coronavirus. At a minimum, I doubt he would have been so critical of Dr. Anthony Fauci during Senate hearings. If Paul continued to have health problems ever after being released from the hospital, I just think that our government would have done more and more people wouldn't think that this virus was a hoax.