Quandaries

Dear friends,

I wrote the following post more than week ago — how much longer it seems! The problems I was wrestling with resolved themselves, and I decided, sadly, to return to the US. I have been home in Vermont since Wednesday night. I am voluntarily self-quarantining for two weeks just in case I picked up something on the trip — but so far I feel fine, although quite disoriented. I’ve been doing my best to get up at 4:30 am to make it to at least some of my classes that are online. It’s nice to be in my familiar home, and most of all, to be able to go outside and garden, walk, chat (from a reasonable distance ) with neighbors, etc. In the coming weeks I plan to continue the blog — I have many photos and thoughts that have as yet been unreported. Stay tuned, stay safe ,stay healthy — and for now, here is what I was thinking eleven days ago:

Cold and rain have settled over Jerusalem these past few days. It makes staying in “lock down” more bearable, in a way. Still, today I went for a brief walk to the park, just to breathe some fresh air. I wasn’t the only one out walking — I saw a few others, mostly small family groups. Everyone I passed looked worried and suspicious, and we all kept well away from each other. It was a far cry from the the usual Shabbat afternoon, when the streets would be full of people come or going from lunch with baskets and pans covered with aluminum foil, kids would be running around yelling, and you could hear loud song coming from many apartments. Today, silence. Still, even in this chilly dampness the spring flowers are blooming and the birds are hopping about.

Hagai and I were planning to go up to Tzfat to visit his mother for Shabbat. I had heard (incorrectly, as it turns out) that Yochi and Yoni and Golan were already up there, and (correctly, I believe) that Avishai and Libat and the kids were going up as well. Laurie, the mother of my grandkids, said Yochi and her family were planning to stay up there and that I was welcome to come as well — “for the duration”. I was wrestling with this generous offer and whether it made sense when I heard from Hagai that Bibi had announced a full lock down. Hagai thought it was wisest to remain in Jerusalem. At the last minute I invited him for Shabbat dinner. Only a minute before Shabbat came in I got a text from Yochi — it seems they also had decided it was best to remain place for now. She invited me to come to their place, but I had already nearly finished cooking dinner –and I wondered if it would be wise to share my germs with time, when I haven’t seen them for a few weeks.

I was invited to join an in person Shabbat lunch today — of six people, she thought — but on reflection I decided to turn that down as well. I miss seeing people “in the flesh”, and I know I will more and more as time goes on. Still, I am an introvert who is well-accustomed to keeping my self occupied, and I get plenty of study and conversation still, even though it is via the internet. I have no wish to catch this thing, nor to accidentally give it to someone else.

My struggle for now is this: do I stay here until June, and hope that I will be able to go home then? Or do I obey the recent instructions of the US State Department and go home now? Part of my decision hinges on whether my house is still occupied, or whether my tenants have gone home to their house in Massachusetts now that, presumably, the school their son attends has closed. I am quite sure that I am safer here than I would be traveling. My only worry is that if I cannot fly in June, I might be stranded here. My lease runs through July, and no doubt my landlady would be willing to renew it if necessary, but I am supposed to be back on the job as of July 1. It’s true that, as someone said to me, if there are no flights there will be no job — at least in person. But it would be better for me to be in the same time zone as my congregation, even if I am serving them virtually. And — I hate to think this — there might be funerals. Please God there won’t — that is my prayer!