Response to Rabbi Ain's Pandemic Questions

I recently read an article by Rabbi Dan Ain in Tablet titled "The Four Questions of the Pandemic." I thought the premise had potential and I opened the article expecting a nuanced and thoughtful piece about what it means to lead and make community in these difficult times. As an active member of my Jewish community, a Jewish parent, and a Jewish professional, I knew that Rabbi Ain would be taking on tough issues with no easy answers. To my surprise and frustration, the article I read had neither nuance nor deep thought. Instead, Rabbi Ain took 1000 words to essentially say "I'm done."

So I'd like to take a few moments to unpack some of Rabbi Ain's accusations about the Jewish response to the pandemic and attempt to offer something of the nuance and thought I'd been hoping to find. Let's begin with Rabbi Ain's first accusation.

"If I can place my finger on the pulse of what’s been so dizzying to me—among an array of upside-downness—it is the refusal to ask questions. It is as though Jewish leaders took an oath of silence regarding pandemic measures, when Judaism itself is built on a foundation of inquiry and engagement." 

First, I would suggest that Rabbi Ain needs to reach out to more people in the Jewish community and Jewish communal leadership. Plenty of people are asking questions. I am in three separate Facebook groups specifically dedicated to conversations among Jewish professionals about Covid, in addition to the regular questions about Covid in pre-existing Jewish professional groups. Just within the synagogue world Rabbi Ain and I inhabit (let's leave aside other Jewish organizations like JCCs for now), these groups include rabbis and cantors, religious school educators, executive directors and program directors, and parents, all looking for ways to balance the competing Jewish values of communal gathering and public safety. On a more local level, congregants are definitely asking their synagogues what the health guidance is and when their favorite or most-needed aspects of the community will return in a mode meaningful to them (whether in-person, multi-access/hybrid, or virtual). Most synagogues I know have convened committees and task forces dedicated to asking questions and reevaluating the ever-changing guidance about Covid. Rabbis, directors, educators, and programmers are talking to our counterpoints at other shuls to compare notes. When synagogues make changes to their mask or vaccine policies, they send detailed information about the changes and are often transparent about the source of their policy (whether it is guidance from the CDC, their local health department, doctors within their membership, or a combination). Jewish leaders love to cite our sources, after all. If these are not questions that Rabbi Ain's community is asking him or steps that he and his leadership are taking, perhaps he should be asking himself why that is and how he can encourage that, rather than accusing the Jewish community at large of silence.

Count the Omer Week 7: Malchut

 Go back to Week 6

One of my daughter's favorite books is The Berenstain Bears Trouble With Friends. Each Berenstain Bears book begins with a little rhyming lesson. Here's the beginning of Trouble with Friends:

When making friends,

the cub whose wise

is the cub who learns

to compromise.

When my daughter reads it, she sometimes says "When making friends, the cub whose wise is the cub who learns to supervise." In the story, the two friends have a lot of fun together, but also struggle with their own bossiness as they each want to lead their activities.

The final week of the Omer is the week of malchut, leadership. Watching toddlers navigate friendships is an interesting lesson in leadership. When do they supervise and when do they compromise? In the story, the main character, Sister Bear, has an argument while playing school with her new friend, Lizzy, because they both want to be the teacher. Sister decides that it's better to play by herself so she can do what she wants, but she quickly learns that it's lonely to play by herself. The two friends make up and decide to take turns being the teacher, so they can play and both lead sometimes.

Leadership requires relationships, because you can't lead no one.

Counting the Omer, each sephira each week is an aspect of God that we should strive to better in ourselves. The week of malchut is the final week and the closest to God. As such, our leadership should reflect the fact that we are made in God's image. We should strive for leadership like God's that is kind and thoughtful, creative and constructive.

Thank you for counting the Omer with us this year! My daughter is very excited to celebrate Shavuot with ice cream. I hope you do the same!

Chag Sameach! 

Count the Omer Week 6: Yesod

 Go back to Week 5 | Skip to Week 7

We are wrapping up week six of the Omer, the week of yesod, foundation and connection.

New in my life, my one-year-old started walking and my three-year-old can write 2-3 letters of her name, so we've been spending a lot of time explaining foundation to them. You have to walk before you can run and jump. You have to know the alphabet before you can read and write.

If you ask our three-year-old how old she is, she will tell you, "I'm one, two, three," and her phrasing got me thinking about how we see age. So often, we ask someone on their birthday, "Do you feel older?" But our whole lives have been building to that age. There's no clean break from 2 to 3 years old. Who I was at 27 informs who I am at 33, so really, aren't I 1, 2, skip a few, 32, 33 years old? It's certainly a good reminder of the foundation upon which our present-day lives are built.

Counting the Omer is remarkably similar to my daughter's method of counting her age. When we count a day, we say "Today is the 40th day of the Omer, making 5 weeks and 5 days of the Omer." Counting the Omer is a method of marking time and growth from who the Israelites were at the Exodus to who they would become upon receiving the Torah at Sinai. Our past is the foundation for our present and we are always connected to it, even as we grow and change.

Six! Six weeks of the Omer! Ah ah ah!