The Good Things That Happened in an Otherwise Terrible Year

Many have summed up 2020 as an “annus horribilis.” You know a year is really, really bad when you have to reach all the way back to Latin to find a phrase that describes its awfulness.

But Latin aside, many good things happened in 2020, too. People discovered resiliency, reassessed their goals and recharted their paths. While some relationships, especially marriages, ended, others built deeper and more satisfying foundations. Deprived of going to shul, people reexamined and renewed their relationships with prayer and with God. There were engagements, marriages, babies born. In a time when so much was suddenly impossible, people discovered the possible.

One ray of sunshine was my family’s newest member, Yaakov Moshe, born on March 17, when everything was breaking loose. My husband and I immediately bought airline tickets to fly to Norfolk, Virginia, for the bris of our sixth grandchild, but the state lockdown was announced a day or two later. Our first Zoom simcha was Yaakov Moshe’s bris. Dozens of family members and friends joined in remotely.

Like so many other families, we also saw job loss. Our daughter, Yael, 26, lost her job as a teacher at one of the local day schools. But through connections, Yael found a better job in special education at a day school in Dallas; her husband, Yonah, was offered a job as a customer success manager at a medical devices start-up in Dallas, too. While we would miss them terribly, we encouraged the move. Although Yael was devastated to lose her job, she found her “dream job in special education” and was able to buy a house, which she “didn’t expect to be able to do in the immediate future.”

Throughout this long crisis, the sense of mission Jeff and I shared only deepened as our life experiences allowed us to offer reassurance and steadiness to our children and grandchildren facing uncertain situations — and that included providing extra care for the children who were suddenly out of school.

My relationship with Jeff changed, too. He had always been a stalwart member of the early morning minyans in town. Pre-pandemic, Jeff often began the day somewhat tense with anticipation over his workday ahead — on the rare weekday morning when we’d see each other, it was hard for him to greet me with a relaxed smile. With the shelter-in-place order, it was an adjustment for both of us to see one another in the morning.

COVID-19 demanded a change. “The restrictions of the pandemic forced me to reassess certain priorities,” Jeff said. “Too many aspects of my life had been on autopilot. With COVID, I finally needed to listen to my inner voice and pay more attention to [the] things that I knew really matter. The best example was slowing down and sharing breakfast with my wife and allowing myself to enjoy her company. Business has slowed, but that has also taken some of the pressure off and given me space to think about other plans for the future.”

Lisa Soltes, a married mother of 23-year-old twin sons, had worked as a graphic designer all her professional life. But her beloved job at Princess Cruises, designing menus for a fleet of 17 ships, was eliminated in June 2020. She found a new passion — making her own challah. “My family and friends were my tasters and critics, and soon I had the perfect recipe,” she said. “Within a very short time and thanks to social media, my challah was the topic of discussion all over town… Now, I deliver challah through braidchallahscv.com to families in time for Friday night.” She noted, “I certainly never considered opening a home-based bakery at my age! But if there is one thing I have learned, it is that change is often out of our hands. I now find myself more open to new possibilities, and I’ve met so many lovely people in my community that I never would have met before.”

“If there is one thing I have learned, it is that change is often out of our hands.” — lisa soltes

Elizabeth Shatzkin, a marriage and family therapist in Los Angeles, observed unexpected resilience among her patients during the pandemic. She explained, “Without all the normal distractions that our daily lives used to bring us, relationships have grown and become more intimate. Individuals have learned about themselves in a way they never had the time to do. Many became aware of a deep creative self that had never been tapped.” Shatzkin said that many patients began to cook, knit, paint, draw or build things.

Those who lacked both personal interactions and some human touch “learned what it means to be by ‘myself’ and being with ‘myself,’” Shatzkin observed. “For those who took the time to look at this, it has been life-changing for the better. The strength of knowing that one can rely on the self to get you through is incredibly powerful.”

While singles have had it particularly hard, many have also found benefits. One woman in her early thirties, a baalat teshuva who preferred to remain anonymous, said that COVID-19 has had a mixed impact on her spirituality and observance. “I’ve been disappointed to see many frum people continue to have large simchas and refuse to wear masks in public,” she said. “As a people, we place so much emphasis on pikuach nefesh (saving lives) and sakanas nefesh (not endangering lives needlessly) … so it is hard to see people who are strict with so many laws be so cavalier about others’ lives.”

But she also found that making a Pesach seder by herself for the first time was “an amazing experience. It really gave me insight into all the work that goes into it. As a baalat teshuva, I’ve always gone to others for meals… and it has been nice to be home rather than out and about. I’ve rediscovered my love of reading, which I never had time for during the week or on Shabbos with other people.”

A rabbi of a medium-sized shul who preferred to remain anonymous observed a more mixed result among his congregation. “People who had been helpful before the pandemic were even more helpful during the pandemic, and conversely, people who were not particularly helpful before the pandemic were even less helpful during the pandemic. In other words, character is what counts more than the life circumstances. I do not believe the pandemic really changed the essence of the person; it just gave everyone an opportunity to express who they really are.”

Rabbi Elchanan Shoff, rabbi of BKLA (Beis Knesses Los Angeles — Not Just a Shul), said that it has been “heartbreaking” to see his shul now at only a quarter capacity or less, “but at the same time, I see that some relationships have blossomed among people who didn’t know one another so well before.” He added, “The atmosphere, though sparse, is also warm and special.”

The tumultuous events of 2020 have driven up rates of Aliyah. By the end of October, the Jewish Agency and the Immigration Absorption Ministry reported that 35,586 aliyah files were opened in 2020 so far (a 133% spike in requests from English-speaking countries), despite Israel’s own COVID-19 outbreaks and lockdowns.

Many college students decided to take a gap year in Israel instead of Zooming into freshman courses. Chicago native Evan McMahon, for example, was scheduled to begin at Dartmouth College in the class of 2024, but he is now part of Aardvark Israel, a program that offers meaningful internships and coursework.

“COVID changed my life in monumental ways,” said McMahon, who plans a career in public health. “I am extremely lucky because I have been able to create very exciting and interesting opportunities for myself during this pandemic. Never would I have thought I would be at my kitchen table in Tel Aviv, looking over my Hebrew and Arabic notes before I head out to my internship at an NGO that aims to alleviate the issues that asylum-seekers deal with in Israel. After much growth and flexibility, I know that taking this year off before university has allowed me to do absolutely amazing things in the context of this global pandemic.”

Judy Gruen’s latest book is “The Skeptic and the Rabbi: Falling in Love with Faith.”