“Do you want
to hear an inspiring story?” my friend asked and after hearing my affirmative
reply she began her tale.
As you know, my mother survived the Holocaust and made her way to America. She married and had three children. I was the oldest and when I was just five-years-old she came down with TB. For six months she was confined in a sanatorium and we weren’t allowed to visit her. Six months she didn’t see her children. Her children! And there were no Zoom or Skype or WhatsApp. Can you imagine how she felt? When she came home my youngest brother wouldn’t go to her. But she followed the regulations because she knew if she didn’t she was endangering her children.
“So,” my friend’s
voice became harsh. “Why are people breaking the rules now to see their
grandchildren, not their five-year-olds and toddlers and babies. Just their grandchildren. Where is everyone’s
sense of responsibility?”
My answer to
her was as discouraging as her story had been inspiring. Simply put we’re a
me-society intent on getting what we want, when we want it, and not thinking
about the good of the world.
There are
people I know who are being extremely careful, leaving the house only to go to
doctor appointments and their required jobs. Others seem to have total
disregard for the directives and do as they please as if these are normal
times. Most, I think, are like myself, staying masked and trying to be cautious
but, knowing that the laws aren’t Divine, bending them here and there.
Thursday
morning I awoke to an extremely disturbing headline in the news. Police broke
up a wedding celebration that was violating Corona virus guidelines and
violence erupted on both sides. My first reaction was sorrow and my second was
to wonder why they hadn’t followed the regulations. Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time. Then my sense of fairness kicked in and I
remembered my grandson’s Shabbat Bar Mitzvah celebration this past summer. Scaled
down quite a bit from what had been originally planned it still wasn’t one hundred
percent within the law. How can I condemn others?
There is a cynical
saying that goes like this: a person who
does one more mitzvah than me is a fanatic while the one doing one less is a heretic.
If we replace the word mitzvah with the phrase “following the Corona rules”
we’d be describing our situation now.
As for
mitzvahs, there’s a commandment to give rebuke when someone is doing something
wrong. However, this mitzvah is qualified by the need to give it with love. Is
it possible to tell someone to put on his mask or social distance without being
vindictive? Can we remember that there’s more to this person than his attitude
to the Corona regulations? Can we love
our neighbor even when we think she’s endangering us? It’s not easy but we must
try. We need to love our neighbors as ourselves.
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