Dear {{first_name}},
With what might be an overabundance of caution, we are canceling tonight's megilah reading due to concerns about the corona virus. I invite all of us to join our friends at B'nai Jeshurun in New York, who will be livestreaming their reading at www.bj.org/live from 7:00 - 9:00 pm. We are extremely grateful to BHA member Dr. Paul Ostrovsky for his guidance in making these hard decisions.
We are also canceling Seeds of Light Chanting on Tuesday night and Morning Minyan on Wednesday. Preschool will continue as scheduled, and our director Ilana Friedman will follow up with more information for our preschool families.
As a resource in these anxious times, we'll be adding some opportunities to gather online for comfort and support. Everyone is invited to gather on zoom for 25 minutes on Tuesday at 2 PM, Thursday at 12 noon and Friday at 2 PM .
As we turn to medical and public health experts for our bodily health, we should be mindful of our spiritual health as well.
This is a situation seemingly tailor-made for panic. We are facing a novel threat which our political leaders seem ill-equipped to address, leaving all of us uncertain what to do.
Who knows? Perhaps this moment is unfolding precisely on the eve of Purim to remind us all of Torah we need, now more than ever.
One of the central mitzvot of Purim is to arrive at a place where we do not know the difference between the wicked Haman and the heroic Mordechai - to return, so to speak, to a beginner's mind.
At this moment, we are like children, beginners at life, who do not know what is going on.
We do not know who is sick and who is well.
We do not know what is prudent and what is foolish.
We do not know if we are safe or if we are in danger.
The painful truth is that we never know those things; the difference is that in this moment, we are aware that we do not know, and that can lead to panic. Once again, our illusion of mastery and control has been lifted from us, leaving us feeling exposed and vulnerable, grasping for a way -- any way -- to alleviate that stress of not knowing. In that grasping, we can make foolish decisions and cause pain to others and ourselves.
Fear is real, but we need not be overwhelmed or lost in it. The path of life is to let pain, even real and terrifying pain, take its place, but not more than that. The place of pain might be a large place, but it need not be every place.
In those moments of fear, I invite you to slow down, sit still and pay attention to your body as a way of grounding in the here and now, as opposed to getting lost in the anxiety of tomorrow. From a place of stillness and non-reactivity, make wise - and inevitably imperfect - decisions about what action to take.
This is what I am doing right now.
With blessings,
Rabbi Brent
