Helen Keller was taken out of her dark, silent world by her teacher Anne Sullivan. Anne spelled words, one by one, into Helen’s eager hand. Each new word lifted her consciousness into the light. That is the mysterious alchemy of words. Words are the solvent to dispel darkness and confusion. Helen said, “Each living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free!”
I am searching for a word to set me free. The stubborn way corona came to town and will not leave. How it became contagious in a way we never anticipated. Sports channels, news channels, commercials, emails, and conversations, all turn back to one unnerving topic. If one more commercial says No Touch Service, I might scream.
I am guilty, too. I will start a corona conversation on the couch and see my husband’s eyes slowly glaze over. He has had enough. I’ve had enough. We have all had enough.
But I can’t let it go either. Here I am writing another article about it. I am still in its clutches. Maybe if I found this elusive word, I could finally relax. This word would illuminate the mindless madness that’s got us all in a vise. This word would boomerang clarity and rebound peace and quiet. It would sound beautiful to the ear.
This word would swiftly answer all the corona questions. Its utterance would unravel corona conundrums and demystify the following vexing anomalies:
- Why news of someone dying prompts the immediate question, “Was it corona?” And then brings relief if it wasn’t. The person is still dead, no?
- Why we have undertaken collective responsibility for causing corona deaths but not for flu or tuberculosis deaths.
- Why corona deaths share a similar stigma to Nine Days tragedies, both carrying a superstitious aura of religious punishment.
- Why we never feared germs like this before and now we Purell our hands like there’s no tomorrow. (At least the germophobes can feel exonerated.)
- Why we used to trust the body to do its recovery thing.
- Why we used to trust G-d to handle the death thing.
- Why we used to smile at each other.
- Why we used to not fear offending people with our face.
- Why we used to make travel plans more than a day in advance.
- Why we used to let our kids ride the school bus together without a second thought.
- Why we used to want them to develop a natural and healthy immunity.
- Why I never once asked my pediatrician about the dangerous side effects of vaccines.
- Why I never realized that vaccination is a billion dollar industry that wines and dines physicians.
- Why I never understood that every single country is vulnerable to political corruption and greed. Except maybe Sweden.
- Why we collectively stiffen our neck to the absolute fact that the worldwide death rate of coronavirus has turned out to be super-low.
- Why we hold tight to pandemic protocols and Plexiglas even after this disease has fallen short of pandemic case fatality rate criteria.
- Why we haven’t made a seudat hoda’ah thanking Hashem for sparing millions of lives from that original predictive model.
- Why we just won’t let go, admit our miscalculations, and set the ship back on a course towards normal.
I miss my pre-coronavirus naïveté.
Udi Qimron, professor of microbiology at Tel Aviv University, explained to Arutz Sheva that the total number of coronavirus deaths does not exceed 0.1% of the total population in any country, and the death rate from the coronavirus is less than .01% of the world population. Meaning that 99.9% of the world’s population so far has survived the epidemic and the virus is negligibly lethal.
Professor Qimron says history will judge the hysteria. Ooh, I like that word, too. I’ve always admired the way Israelis speak their minds. These two professors can give a course on how to be modeh al ha’emes.
There is another phenomenon I needed a word for. Malkie Gordon Hirsch spelled a beautiful word into my hand in last week’s paper. Dialectical. What a relief that word brings me. Thank you, Malkie. It means the way you feel before the fact and the way you feel after the fact. That you can hold two diametrically opposing realities in the palm of one hand and sit comfortably inside the confusion. The desperate way you flail your arms to try and stop an oncoming train collision and then the accepting way you sort through the wreckage afterwards. When I saw COVID-19 coming, I tried flailing my arms. A lot of us understood it belonged to G-d from the beginning. A lot of us sensed that the more we tried to exert control over death and disease, the bigger the train wreck would be. A lot of us knew humanity grossly overstepped its bounds. This frustrated us to no end. We knew this futile attempt to prevent preordained death would only make it come out sideways and distorted. Suicide, depression, starvation, looting, murder. The footprint of this mammoth overreaction will reverberate for generations to come.
This was the reality we were helpless to prevent, before the fact. Now six months later, we have arrived peacefully after the fact. We can see tangible beauty emerging from the wreckage and hopefully a lot more to come. The topography had to crack open to shine a light on dark underworlds and enemies hiding below. Many false worlds have been exposed. Truth is being spoken.
So I reconcile reality with this thought. Everything did not have to happen this way and everything had to happen this way. G-d has a plan and He always did. G-d Himself is dialectical. The poetic morning prayer of Atah Hu captures this essence. “It was You before the world was created. It was You since the world was created. It is You in this world. It is You in the World to Come … Blessed are you who makes his name transcendent in the public domain.”
The prayer starts with the dialectical and ends with the transcendent. One is found inside the other. It is a formula. Through accepting the dialectical nature of life on earth, we can achieve moments of heaven. Up inside the transcendent realm alongside G-d is where we find peace from all the confusion. All earthly constraints fall away and opposing realities fit seamlessly inside one another.
I have another word I love. I can reconcile contrasting realities using this four-letter Hebrew word. It stills my soul every time my worried eyes pass over it. “Harpu,” as in “Harpu u’d’eu, be still and know.” Its rhythmic cadence calms me. It reminds me not to be afraid of anything. Not a virus, not an untested vaccine, not a possible mandate, not a chip, not any deviant politician, not any celebrity affiliated with an evil island. This two-syllable word shifts my visual field and places G-d squarely at the center of the control panel.
It splashes cold water on my face and says, “Desist (be still, let go, calm down, stop it) and know that I am G-d, exalted over the Nations, exalted over the Land” (Psalms 46:11). Hearing those words hits a gong inside my head. All catastrophic overthinking scatters.
Harpu commands me to get quiet and notice G-d hovering above. This word can make a frenetic world appear silent. It teaches me to observe upheaval with curiosity instead of alarm. Like a fierce wind that animates the leaves outside my window as I sit at my desk peacefully watching the noiseless dance.
As we enter this new month of Elul, G-d opens the gates of Heaven for our prayers. Our job is to cling to G-d and trust that all will be made right by Him. G-d is King. Let us call out to Him and hear Him answer us. He understands the heart and soul of all men, and a word does not exist to spell out how much He loves every single one of us.