FACE THIS UPHEAVAL WITH FAITH, LOVE

An empty synagogue on Friday night or Saturday morning would normally be a terrible situation. And it is a terrible situation but for now, our empty synagogue is a sign of our community’s participation in doing our part to minimize the spread of the novel coronavirus.

For now, we are only praying together through our webcast services. In some ways this is familiar. We have been webcasting our services for several years now so that congregants who are ill, immune-compromised, traveling or away for work or school can join us electronically and be with their community. On the other hand, this is the first time we have ever webcast a service that did not have a single person in the room other than the prayer leaders.

This is our new normal. For the Jewish community, we are, in fact, swimming a river of uncharted waters between rival values. As Jewish professionals, the members of my amazing team have been working around the clock to learn, and adapt. San Diego’s rabbis have been connecting regularly to share where we are with our policies and our practices and how we are adapting. We are supporting each other as we each support our synagogue communities.

For all of us, the sudden interruption to daily and weekly life feels strange, dystopian, unnatural. So much of Jewish life is built around regular gatherings. In fact, we require a quorum of 10

community members to say our prayers. We are required to engage in daily and weekly study, to visit each other’s homes when people are sick or when someone dies. Our spiritual lives are literally built around required engagement and spending time together. Central as well to our Jewish spiritual life is the sacred value of pikuach nefesh — saving a life. It is a cornerstone of Jewish life to be personally and communally responsible for working together to save lives and to keep ourselves, our families and our community protected and safe.

We must, in such a situation as this, defer to the value of doing our part to minimize the spread of this potentially deadly illness and do our best to save lives. And yet, even knowing how imperative social distancing is and how important it is to close down everything at the synagogue, it has not been an easy decision because doing so is such an anathema to Jewish life. Doing so means that people who already live a daily social existence of isolation and loneliness would not have the reprieve of daily/weekly prayer, learning and human connection that is so absolutely vital for the soul and the mind.

After encouraging people to join services from home last weekend, we made the decision that, going forward, we would have no more in-person gatherings. Since then, we have been working to shift to a completely online model for learning, tutoring, meeting and praying.

We also began an initiative this week to call and contact every member household of our community and do check-ins. We are working to find out who needs assistance with grocery shopping, prescription pick-ups, and who might just be lonely and isolated and need friendly calls. We’re also finding out who is healthy and willing to assist those who are self-quarantined. Before we’d come to the end of the week, we had already connected a number of volunteers with a number of people who cannot go out because they are immunecompromised. We are finding out who needs extra assistance for food and supplies and who knows that they will need support in the weeks ahead because of lost wages and lost employment.

The magnitude of the wave of human need that we are about to face as a society cannot be overstated, and we hope that by starting now with connecting with each household we can be as prepared as possible, along with our communal organization partners, such as Jewish Family Service of San Diego, to catch as many people as we can before they falter.

As Jews, we enjoy a long and vibrant history that has taught us certain truths. The world is always full of times of profound instability and upheaval. It is our choice how to face these times. When we face this upheaval with faith, creativity, love and determination, we will find our way forward together.