Passover and Easter, two important holidays for our collective cultures were both celebrated this month. Yet, our annual sense of unity and community have been altered and somewhat lost this year- yet another consequence of the Corona pandemic.

Being under quarantine during this time of year really made us contemplate how to make these holidays as special and significant as they used to be. But how can we celebrate the freedom of the Jewish people without reading the Haggadah around a huge table and without the hunting of the Matzah? How can we celebrate the resurrection of Christ and the renewal of life without Mass at Church and the hunting of the Easter eggs?

On the other hand, this year we were celebrating with relatives near and far through the same medium, video calling. This showed how technology can help form a sense of resemblance to physical closeness regardless of your age. Sharing one screen for one night, everyone screensharing the meals that they had prepared alone, while saying the prayers together. In Tel-Aviv for example, people organized an assembly where everyone sang the same holiday song from their rooftops and porches. Meanwhile, Christians all over the world watched the Mass of the Holy Fire from the Holy Sepulchre Church in Jerusalem, from the comfort of their own living rooms.

This pandemic is altering the course of our future as we know it. We were always destined to become closer to technology and this pandemic has definitely made us more dependent and reliant on machinery rather than on human contact and physical communication. Hence the reason why learning tools such as open communication and mediation skills such as the ones that we teach at the Charney Center are more crucial now than ever. With that being said, now it can be even easier to communicate globally without the need to think twice of limitations such as borders. Nonetheless we should not forget our elders, who might find it a little more difficult to keep up with our advanced ways of communicating.

Maybe this period in time can give us a chance to focus on the positive outcomes that could come from this pandemic, the advanced opportunities that it will bring forth and all of the possibilities it will offer instead of sulking in the fears, disadvantages, and restrictions of this virus. Coming from different backgrounds in what feels like a never-ending sea of disagreements between our two worlds, we found our situations fairly relatable and sharing many similarities during this unusual time.

Corona Reflections: Chapter 1