Inside Our Time: Pesach 2020 by Loren Judaken

Being single people constantly wonder
Aren’t you lonely?
Alone yes, but never lonely.
Until now,
until quarantine kept me isolated
from connection and community,
from my passionate pursuits.
Kept me in my usually pristine home,
now an avalanche of office paperwork
swept up in the whirlwind
preceding “social isolation”,
a phrase I am beginning to loathe.
It sounds so much like
“solitary-confinement,”
the type of incarceration
only endured by the worst prison inmates.

But what is the crime
for which we are all being punished,
for which we are now all in private jails?
Perhaps it is the delusional thinking
that our natural resources are limitless-
The ignorant denial of global warming-
The naivety of misunderstanding
the interconnectedness of all things-
Of all people.

Thinking countries can transform into islands
isolated from one another-
Thinking our delusional leaders
aren’t the same as the hungry hyenas
folklore endowed with witchcraft
that could influence people
and steal their spirits.
Thinking we can inoculate ourselves
against the suffering of others-

Believing the blinders we wear
make the injustice we see,
the lies we hear,
the hatred that is coagulating,
all disappear.
Believing we are immune
from what others are forced to endure.

This year the Pesach Seder
could resonate in a whole new way.
What if we saw ourselves
not as the Hebrews
enslaved by Pharaoh in Egypt,
but rather as the slave masters.
This year we are the ones
suffering from the plaque
so it is not too far a stretch
What is our role in creating mizraim

We are all jigsaw pieces
in the same giant puzzle.
But there is an antidote for apathy,
a vaccination for indifference,
a cure for complacency.
It is Hineni – Here I am.
Our world is diseased
and we each have a role to play
in healing it, in Tikkun Olam.