Shofar in the Aftermath of Corona

The ram’s horn was blown. The man’s cheeks inflated like a balloon, his countenance rivaling a beet’s red, sweat dripping profusely as he was trying with all his might to emit one continuous large resounding, penetrating sound that would fill the expansive synagogue, reaching high up into the balconies and even to the far rear of the hall, percolating into the hearts of the entire congregation.  A large, crowded mass of bodies prayed and sang together all day for the first time since the corona lockdowns began.   Very few masks remained scattered on faces both young and old.   A few black masks, a few sky-blue ones, even a few white ones, (fitting for a holiday when we are supposed to wear white), spotted throughout the vast space.  Mostly worn by people who knew they were more susceptible.  Possibly immune-compromised.  Or with family members they needed to protect.  Or simply those aware, for whatever reason, that they were vulnerable.  No longer was anyone wearing stylish masks matching their clothing with gold chains draped from either side of the mask as they once did as the pandemic was ebbing and fashion dared to rear its face even the guise of face masks. Now almost every mask in synagogue was not cloth, but paper.  Disposable.  As the shofar sounded through the entire large hall, I looked from the top row of a high balcony at the congregation gathered.  I was both observer and participant.  The disposable masks highlighted the mortality theme woven throughout the prayers all day that day.  The masks over the past three years were hiding places.  A way to walk and not be noticed on the street.  To be anonymous.  People’s smiles camouflaged. Facial expressions partial.  Challenging to interpret.  The scarce but obvious masks remaining were reminders of our vulnerability.  It could have been almost anything causing a global pandemic.  The Coronavirus alone did not have this privilege.  We all knew it could easily happen again.  Everyone knew someone who in the recent past had been infected by Coronavirus and snuffed away like on a television screen when a large human-size vacuum just zaps away silhouettes.  People who were once here were gone forever.  Kidnapped, unable to breath, dying as solitudes in hospital beds, all family and visitors precluded.  The number of victims. too massive to ponder.  Easier to forget.  But the few masks identified on scattered countenances throughout the auditorium, both young and old, brought the recent past here in synagogue on Yom Kippur to haunt us.

The masks over the past three years were hiding places, a way to walk and not be noticed on the street, to be anonymous… The scarce but obvious masks remaining were reminders of our vulnerability.

And when it was over, and most poignantly at its climax, in the Netaneh Tokef prayer of Who Shall live and Who Shall die…Who by water, who by fire, Who by plague was not referring to things relegated to history books or to things in the distant future, but instead the prayer addressed the present.  Hurricane Ian had just yesterday or the day before taken so many lives.

The plague of Coronavirus was not in Medieval times.  It was current.  It had stolen away the lives of over 6 million people.  A holocaust in the 21st Century.  As we sat in close proximity to one another on wooden benches with velvet cushions everyone knew no one was protected.  Everyone was vulnerable.

Which made the power of coming together even more forceful.  More potent than ever.

As the shofar sounded at the end of the service all I heard was a mere echo of what transpires daily in my home as I watch my daughter suffer with a chronic disease, invisible to the eyes of clinicians and scientists, and even, often to a passerby on the street.  As I listen to the ram’s horn piercing sound for myself and for my daughter, I am saddened that she was not empowered enough by her ailing body to decide to opt in or opt out of joining the congregation on this Holy Day.  Which is our everyday.  Options are stolen away. Incessantly. The themes of mortality and vulnerability painted in bright red and highlighted with a neon yellow marker.  There was no escape.  For me, for her doting father, and even more for her, Yom Kippur was not a single day lasting 24 hours where the sun rose and the sun set, life progressed and the cycle of Jewish holidays paraded forward into Sukkot, the “time of our joy, our happiness.”  No, we were stuck in time.  Stuck in Yom Kippur.  Unable to move forward into Zman Simchateinu, the season of our joy.  Locked in the present moment.  The past too traumatic to recall.  The future stolen away.  Even her dreams of a future.  Evaporated.

Karin Charnoff-Katz is a physician at New York Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York City.