Reena Bromberg Gaber
These are the words that encapsulate all of the human race’s experiences for the past two years—through the wilderness brought on by COVID-19, in Europe, Asia, America, Africa, Australia—and the horror it wreaked on schoolchildren and hospitals, the trauma it brought onto the people of Earth, and the existential nature of its effects on all people and relationships—it was in the two-thousand and twentieth year that the United States was faced by this virus, this disease, with instructions given by Dr. Anthony Fauci to wear face masks and stay inside, while socially distancing from anyone outside your familial pod. On the other side of this, the people of Earth would be more different than they ever expected, sophomores in high school suddenly applying to college and seniors in college thrown into real adulthood. Dr. Fauci said:
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention spoke to us, saying: You will stay in your houses for two weeks, socially-distance from your neighbors and friends and family and then you will be able to have your Easter gatherings and Fourth of July parties. You will make it through this, we all will. Just listen to what we are saying and follow us exactly. Take possession of your work-from-home offices, utilize the technology of Zoom, and stay at home. You will be delivered to health and safety if you listen to what we say.
Thereupon we said to each other, “I cannot bear the burden of this by myself. The comfort of TikTok and DIYs, Zoom birthday parties and street concerts have supported us over these past few months. The maskless, reckless, disobedient souls have multiplied COVID as numerous as the stars in the sky—May the doctors and healthcare workers and emergency responders decrease your numbers a thousandfold and hold those souls back from death as they have promised you—How can we bear these moments of isolation, the burden of masks, the bickering of our politicians and people on the streets! Pick from each of your best scientists and researchers who are wise, discerning, and experienced, and they will be appointed to head the vaccine research and creation programs.” You answered us and said, “What you propose to do is good.” So I took your best scientists and researchers, wise and experienced people, and appointed them heads of these programs: chiefs of the vaccine research and creation programs. I charged them at the time as follows, “Hear out your fellow citizens, and decide justly between any person and a fellow American or a stranger. You shall not be partial to which type of vaccine will work: hear out the best proposals and types of vaccine. Fear no criticism, for judgement is only the response of COVID prevention. And any matter that is too difficult for you, you shall bring to each other and you will hear it.” Thus we instructed you, at that time, about the various things that you should do.
We stayed at home and traveled nowhere, to do as our COVID czar instructed us. When we reached insanely high numbers of cases, we did not even gather for funerals or weddings, religious ceremonies or school. Fauci said to you, “Keep up this behavior so that we can have the holiday season together and not be afraid that our actions are killing our loved ones. See, Netflix and Disney Plus have given you so many movies and television shows at your disposal. Go up, take possession of your couch, as I promised this would help prevent your family and friends from sickness and death. Fear not [too much] and be not dismayed.”
Then some of you came together and said, “Let us sacrifice some of ourselves, this is just the flu, nothing more.” No one could approve or disapprove of this plan, and so you self-selected yourselves, who would follow the rules and who would not. It drove deep divisions between all Americans, even between some family members and many friends. They made for the restaurants and gyms and beaches and came to each other and got sick. They took long-term health effects with them: loss of smell, shortness of breath, and fatigue. And even then, some still gave us this report: “It is just a flu that the coronavirus is giving to us.”
Yet some of you, even after your loved ones died or you were on a ventilator, flouted the command of the CDC. You protested in the streets, harassed service workers, and spread COVID and said, “These are our rights, you cannot infringe them. It is because of China and the liberals that we are in this situation. What kind of place are we living in, that you can decide to tell us what to do?”
But eventually that opinion was quieted (although it still exists, two years later) as the death toll reached over half a million. The opinion instead changed to the safety and efficacy of the vaccine. So it was said to you, “Have no dread or fear of them. None other than the best doctors and scientists will fight this for you, just as they did for Polio and AIDS and Mumps and Measles, before your very eyes, and in the labs, where you saw their expertise excel to develop the best type of vaccine possible. Yet for all that, you have no faith in the researchers, who go before you on this journey—to protect you before you get there—sleepless nights, working day and night, in order to guide us all on the route we are to follow.”
When the CDC and those researchers heard your loud complaints of how dangerous the vaccine is and how insignificant the virus is, after working so hard for so long to help you, they were angry. They vowed: Not one of these people, this evil generation, shall be able to see a time without the virus if they continue with this denial—none except the people who believe in the science and are doing whatever they can to protect their family and friends; they will see a time without the virus, they will see a time of peace, because they remained loyal to us.
Because of you, COVID-19, we will forever be different. Everything has changed because of you: You shall not continue to wreak havoc on our lives. Our vaccines will wreak havoc on your spread. The vaccines and the boosters have imbued us with strength. Moreover, our little ones who you tried to prevent from learning and developing, who do not yet know good from bad, or addition from subtraction, their lives will, once again, be normal. You will not prevent them from growing up in the way that they should. You should not prevent any of the students from having the experiences they are meant to have; to those children and young adults, to those students, they will get the vaccine and will never have long periods of isolation or virtual school, they will continue to live the way they are supposed to. The rates of anxiety and depression will slowly decrease as their lives go back to normal. As for you, COVID, turn about and march into the wilderness by the way of the Sea of Reeds. Go away from this place. Do not be the new normal. Do not be a new normal. Heed our cries and let us be.
>>In a final essay for a class at the Jewish Theological Seminary, I was asked to create a dialogue of the greatest voices in the Hebrew Bible. I chose to recreate the first chapter of Deuteronomy if it was written today. This is based on translations from the Jewish Publication Society and Etz Hayim Humash translations.
