With a catastrophe looming, doesn’t our community need to speak up on this, and now?

One effect of the virus that’s kept us all home is that our perspectives have so quickly and drastically shifted on so many of the “regular” things that frame our lives.

• Family members have been sharing with me some recently-circulating Mommy jokes, like this one: And just like that, no one ever again asked a stay-at-home mom what she does all day. And this one: Mother overheard saying, “I’ve really got to get to sleep…tomorrow’s another week.”

If there’s newfound appreciation for one of the world’s most complex and important occupations – being a mother to young kids -- it’s not just because people are getting to see and experience first-hand what mothers do every day of the year. It’s also because jobs without big salaries and prestigious titles are devalued out in the “real” world. Until something cataclysmic happens that puts all that money and prestige in perspective, and we realize the world inside the home is where most of the stuff that really matters happens. Let’s hope this lesson, like so many others being painfully learned, sticks for the long run.

• I was at a family chasunah the other week on a back porch, and it’s beauty was in its simplicity. Without all the ritzy, glitzy trappings getting in the way, people were able to focus on what was actually taking place, the founding of a new outpost of hashra’as haShechinah in Klal Yisrael.

Of course, it was understandably emotional, too; a chassan and kallah, after all, wait for this day for so many years, and this isn’t how they imagined it. Still, I couldn’t stop thinking about how many young women we all know who’ve also been waiting many years, sometimes just for a date, let alone a wedding date. They’d give anything right now to be a kallah under a chuppah, anywhere. At Terrace on the Park, or just in a park.

To get a sense of how far we’ve come so fast, just today a rav told me of another recent backyard wedding he attended where the grandfather brought a few live chickens to roam around free during the chuppah, just to give it the flavor of a wedding back in the shtetl in the Old Country. And from what I’m told, not one person present cried fowl.

• A very special email landed in my inbox last Erev Shabbos from someone in Eretz Yisrael I don’t speak with often. It read simply: “Dear R' Eytan, Thinking of you and your family. May Hashem Yisborach protect all of you. May this Shabbos be one of menuchas ahavah u’nedavah, menuchas emes v’emunah, menuchas shalom v’shalvah v’hashkeit vavetach.” Sort of makes you reassess, no?

• In their joint proclamation of a Yom Tefillah this past Wedenesday, four preeminent councils of gedolei Torah in Eretz Yisrael and America emphasized that “teshuvah is more than just davening, it’s about actions.” They urged us to “return to Hashem vigorously, mending our ways in bein adam l’Makom and bein adam l’chaveiro, staying far from lashon hara, machlokes and rechilus, and staying far from the soul-destroying technological devices. Let’s increase our love of our fellows, seeing their good points, not their flaws, strengthening in Torah, yiras Shamayim, kiyum hamitzvos and serving Hashem with joy.”

Let’s hope the call to eschew destructive tech doesn’t get lost in the shuffle. It’s been observed that while the current crisis has had the effect of at least temporarily ameliorating some frum communal ills such as extravagant consumerism, it has also made people more dependent on another of them, which is technology. But a current need to depend on online access in some areas of our lives need not translate into a complete collapse of principle. We can do what we need to, without a full surrender to the god of Tech, from which these pre-eminent Torah leaders are imploring us to stay far away. Let’s just call it social media distancing.

• There was a heartwarming Associated Press story recently about a 22-year-old Jewish student at Yale named Liam Elkind, who, together with his friend Simone Policano, “amassed 1,300 volunteers in 72 hours to deliver groceries and medicine to older New Yorkers and other vulnerable people. They call themselves Invisible Hands, and they do something else in the process — provide human contact and comfort, at a safe distance, of course.”

Elkind had watched his father, a doctor, and other caregivers working tirelessly to address the outbreak, and thought to himself, “OK, I can go buy some groceries. That I can do.” He’s on spring break now, after which school will resume with remote learning, but unless directed by the authorities to stop, Invisible Hands will continue on.

The effort has already attracted offers to start branches of Invisible Hands in Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington and London. “It’s been really exciting just to see …how many people there are in this world who want to do good and are looking for ways to do that,” Elkind said. “This is a 24-7 operation right now. It’s overwhelming in the best way possible.”

But even those of us who can’t circulate out and about right now like the Invisible Hands folks can still engage in one of the greatest, yet most underestimated types of giving there are: chessed with our words. Picking up the phone and calling another person to see how they’re faring and what they need can be so powerful and mean so much.

• And on that note, a thought from the Kozhiglover Rav, Rav Aryeh Tzvi Frumer, who was a leading talmid of the Avnei Nezer and also served as rosh yeshivah in Yeshivas Chachmei Lublin. Chazal teach that during a plague that was killing 100 Jews daily, Dovid Hamelech instituted the obligation to recite mei’ah brachos, one hundred daily blessings. Although this obligation pertains always (see Orach Chaim 46:3), various gedolei Torah have mentioned the additional significance of reciting them with special kavanah during the current period.

The Gemara sees an illusion to this obligation in the pasuk (Devarim 10:12) “Ve’ata Yisrael mah Hashem Elokecha shoel mei’imach ki im leyira Es Hashem Elokecha -- what does Hashem ask of you other than to fear Him?” interpreting the word “mah” (“what”) as “meiah” (“a hundred”). But from where, asks Rav Frumer, does the extra aleph materialize that transforms mah into mei’ah?

He explains that when each Jew individually says of himself, “Mah ani umah chayai -- What am I and what is my life?” that humility enables him to bond with other Jews, and the aleph, representing that unity, comes into being. The “mah” of humility breaks down the barriers between Jews and gives birth, as it were, to the “aleph” of oneness.

Each Jew reciting his hundred brachos a day alone in his home, can bring us all together, fused into one.

OFF LIMITS Jonathan Tobin, writing in National Review, raises an issue of the highest concern to frum Jews: That if the crisis worsens, pressing ethical dilemmas about triaging scarce medical resources will arise, making it essential that the president “appoints his own national bioethics commission. That body should…help craft a response to the crisis that will be informed by moral and ethical considerations that will ensure that the needs of elderly victims are not sacrificed to expediency.”

In Italy, 85 percent of victims have been over 70, hospitals are overwhelmed and ventilators scarce. The published guidelines of the Italian medical associations suggest it “may become necessary to establish an age limit for access to intensive care,” and there are already reports of refusals to treat patients over age 60.

Yet, Tobin writes,

the Trump administration has yet to put forward any coherent response to questions about how the elderly will be treated if the coronavirus crisis should overwhelm American health-care facilities….the Trump administration has no standing commission ready to supply such guidance. Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush had bodies that formally advised them on bioethics….but Trump chose not to have any group working on the topic.

Ultimately, he says, the question is “whether Americans — and in particular, an administration that has prided itself on its pro-life stance — will be willing to ignore Judeo-Christian traditions about the sanctity of life, including that of the elderly, to manage this crisis.”

So with a catastrophe looming and no policy yet established, doesn’t our community need to speak up on this, and now?

Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 805. Eytan Kobre may be contacted directly at kobre@mishpacha.com