Letters: Coronavirus Pesach, Courageous TV Series

Coronavirus Pesach
It is interesting that this so-called 11th plague affects everyone. In the seders we participated in recently we recounted the 10 plagues meant only for our oppressors, that forced the Hebrews into slavery.

This message today may be for us to treat everyone with dignity and chesed regardless of religion or race.

Remember Abraham long ago greeted everyone with respect regardless of culture, etc.

Maybe it’s not a coincidence that COVID-19 arrived at this time.
Martin Hauptschein, via email

Courageous TV Series
Thank you, Lior Raz, for the courage to create a series that aptly illustrates the complex love-hate relationship between Palestinians and Jews that has existed long before the State of Israel was established, a relationship that Americans, who find it easier to place political realities into convenient boxes, find difficult to comprehend (“ ‘Fauda’ Returns: Lior Raz on the ‘Most Emotional’ Season Yet,” April 17).

While staying at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem one year, we toasted the birth of a grandchild to a seventh generation Yershalmi Arab bartender who lived in the West Bank. There was an unspoken understanding between us that if we had to save or protect our people, we would do so, and yet this reality was not inconsistent with our joy at the birth of a new generation with all its exhilarating possibilities for peace.

Even our language connects us. My father, a police officer in Tel Aviv under the British Mandate who worked with Arab officers, said, “We greet each other with ‘Sholom Aleichem’ while the Arabs say, ‘Salaam Aleikem.’ Doesn’t that tell you something?”
Mina Friedler, Venice

Media, Politicians Use Pandemic to Increase Power
The pandemic isn’t a disaster; it’s the collateral damage caused by the panicked reaction (shutdowns) based on flawed garbage-in, garbage-out coronavirus models, of local, county, state and federal governments that is the disaster.

Even if you look at this virus as the 11th plague, it’s not causing nearly as many deaths as the top eight causes of death in the United States (that nobody calls disasters). The shutdowns are exacerbating many causes of death (child abuse, hunger, substance abuse, denied medical care, suicide, etc.) that no one is charting on a day-by-day basis.

We have been humbled by overzealous political executives abusing their power. Let’s not accept it. We now have a country whose citizens’ freedoms are under siege by government officials. As Rabbi Pini Dunner wrote on the Journal’s website on April 3, 2015, “Charles-Louis de Secondat, aka Montesquieu, wrote, ‘A nation may lose its liberties in a day and not miss them for a century.’ ”

What we really need to do is protect the most vulnerable and let everyone else get back to school/work/synagogue to develop herd immunity.
Warren Scheinin, Redondo Beach

The War We Let Inside
And then one day Sandy Hook happened. And the children bled and cried and died. And the moral compass suffered  — decayed into all lies. The schools became ground zero. Families torn to shreds, no one paid attention to the cries of innocent lives or heads.There was a war that lasted years. Mass shootings were the trend. Homes were broken, lives were crushed, we wondered to what end? And the countries went on a nuclear race, And the leaders were thirsty in greed, Economies began to bleed, And the powerful hungered for sexual domination, And the women spoke up, me too’d in retaliation, And the bullies lied, Religion and all nonprofits? Totally catastrophic; an abyss for empty promises, forgotten why’s with twisted stories inside their dirty lies. And we pointed fingers at the Jews, the refugees, the blacks. And hate became the brand new trend, the new addictive crack. And the children suffered silently through abuse of every kind, And the weak were further kicked and mauled down the wormhole line, And the politics got ugly, and the leaders lied and flexed, And the people all divided, you can’t imagine what happened next. Up was down and wrong was right — the world became a wreck. And Syria gassed its population, while North Korea starved its nation, as al-Qaida, Isis raped and scalded more, America paid China like her whore For all her thirsty treats, a communist regime, as smoky air strangled Earth, an overtaxed  bloodstream. And then one wind of viral silence blew upon the Earth, And no one was impervious to the choking it would birth.The war outside came rumbling in between the walls instead, We went inside for our time out, gasping for air with our thoughts in dread. 8 million stopped the hateful trends and shootings were no more, humanity had starved itself from gathering outside its doors. The privilege to assemble Once taken all for granted, Replaced with isolation, “Flatten the curve” was chanted. Shallow vanity, it seemed, had left quickly with no trace, Power, greed and murdering turned to be replaced, With balconies gathering with song and love and grace. The war that was began to die and soon it was no more. Coronavirus crowned our hands that stole with a different kind of corps. The race was on to save each life, There was no time to take one.  God pulled the trigger himself, cocked the viral spray gun. The bidding had begun upstairs The silent enemy so sly, nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Every class and color creed equally condemned indeed — To search for peace, and love, compassion or be dead. We washed our hands a hundred times and still we washed them more, But would washing all the past blood hurts even out the score? Yet no one could out run the fact that working as one member had become the only virus that, Finally,
strung humanity all together.
Chava Floryn

The Value of Friendship
An article you published on friendship by Mark Schiff prompted me to share a most indelible memory. It happened years ago at the Brandeis Institute. A man approached me and we spent time chit chatting. We touched on many things that Shabbat afternoon. This was heaven for me, who has speech difficulties and other handicaps.

Quickly, the man became my friend and I started calling him Pop (my dad had passed years before).  Pop and his wife no longer attended the Institute.  I got his phone number and this marked the beginning of many phone calls between us. Our friendship spanned several years until he passed away.

One of the many that gifts Pop gave me was allowing me to express whatever was on my mind. After our pleasantries of “How are you?” he would ask, “How are you really?” and I was off to the races.  Pop’s concern was palpable. I once had a position high on the totem pole. I told Pop that I wanted to quit the job. His advice was to stay with it. I am thankful for him. I am so thankful for that advice. It was absolutely the best.

Here’s to friendships like mine with Pop.  May others be so lucky.
Susan Cohn, Via email