Jordana in 2020

The last time I posted a blog was in January. And while that may sound weird, considering the downtime we've all had this past year, let us also consider what we've largely been doing: Nothing.

For posterity's sake and in case my kids ever read this blog on their iPhone37s one day, we are T- minus 7 days from 2021. And while I assumed we'd be entering this new year filled with optimism for better times ahead, I can't help but be tempered by the reality that I'm last on the list for a vaccine, we need 70-80% country-wide compliance before things can return to normal, and mostly- we have no idea what normal actually means.

So maybe a yearly recap then? In January I was traveling (lol!) through Europe, not a care in the world. I came back with a wicked case of laryngeo-tracheitis which upon reflection I wonder was early-adoption Covid. I think everyone I know who was randomly sick in January or February 2020 thinks they were patient zero for Covid, but I digress.

This gal traveling in Portugal has no idea what's coming

I remember watching a Facebook video about a virus in far-flung Wuhan, China which looked out of a science fiction/horror movie. "Wow," I thought, "It must really suck to live in Wuhan." Never did I expect it would suck to live... literally everywhere.

Then came Purim and rumblings that the virus was spreading. Did I go to shul and a party? Yep! Was I on a committee to host a dinner the Friday night following that the rabbi didn't want to cancel because he was sure it would all be fine by then? Yep! Was that the beginning of life as we knew it? YEP!

In short order, life shut down. It was during the first lockdown that I really understood the breadth of the pandemic. Of course there was the physical toll (more on that later) but the emotional, economic and mental tolls were never something I foresaw. And it was that mental and emotional strain that caused me to flee a country that had Covid "under control" (Israel) to join the hysterical masses in Covid-ravaged New York to be with my family. 

To Cliff's Notes the next part of the year: I flew in an empty airport, essentially holding my breath in fear for 10 hours before joining my parents in a house where we all wore masks. Around each other. We had a lovely, low-key Pesach after which I discovered that there was essentially no way for me to get back home. Flight after flight got canceled, resulting in nine incredible weeks in NYC. And by NYC I mean the four walls of my house because I basically saw nothing and went nowhere.

All that said, those nine weeks were bizarrely some of the most incredible I've ever had. Tragically, my grandfather Henry Sealine passed in the beginning of my stay. I was able to say goodbye to him and attend his funeral which probably would have been difficult in the best of times but certainly impossible during a pandemic. I was able to be there for my mother during a shiva week where no one else could be there for her. I was able to watch my nephews and grocery shop and help out in a way I generally can't living so far away.

And my sister's family was under the same roof en route to moving houses, so I had nine weeks of unadulterated family time, which I know will never happen again. So that was definitely the peak in a year chock full of valleys.

Did I force my family to take this photo because I never get to be in family photos anymore? Sure did!

Finally I came home and by that I mean to my apartment. All the time. As someone I refer to as "Covid-careful" (too careful?) I turned into someone totally new- a homebody. Pre-Covid I was out maybe 4-5 nights a week. I was social, guys. Suddenly I was always home. Parties were paused as were big Shabbat dinners. Weddings were on Zoom and so was wine club. Meeting new people became difficult so dating became even more so. Tel Aviv, the Israeli city that never slept took a long nap (for me at least- I saw some people raging on Instagram and well- it's their lives!) Summer passed me by unnoticed and Fall was largely uneventful but punctuated by High Holidays spent praying alone due to a second country-wide lockdown.

Here we are in December and heading into yet another lockdown (an idea so amazingly beneficial it has to be tried again!) Truth be told, I was unaware the second lockdown had ended. Just passing closed restaurant after shuttered bar- I didn't really see the point of this lockdown but then again, I'm not one of the super-geniuses running our government (can't wait to choose my favorite super-genius in the upcoming "yearly election!")

I'm now chilling in bidud (quarantine) because I recently went back to the States for an even shorter period of time than I will be in said quarantine. And why would I make such a crazy sacrifice? Because my delicious nephew was a bar mitzvah and some things in this world are worth the aggravation of Covid flights, 4 Covid tests, a 2- week quarantine and month-long jet-lag. This was one of them. 

Me and my favorite Bar Mitzvah young man

So here I sit- a few days before my bidud birthday and on the precipice of a new year. One that the optimist in me hopes is better, while the science-lover in me waits patiently for the vaccine. And until then I will wear my mask, eat my sushi at home, a raise a rosé l'chaim to 2021- may it be the happiest, healthiest year yet!

A Land of Our Own

Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day and the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. One of the two days in the year (the other being Yom HaShoah) where the world has the opportunity to reflect on the horrors of the Holocaust. I think, for Jews, that opportunity comes up a lot more often. For someone like me, who has a mild to moderate obsession with the history of the Holocaust, I reflect quite regularly.

I spent last week in Europe, mostly traveling alone. I went to Lisbon, Frankfurt and London on my yearly "mental health break" where I see the world and just breathe a bit (if you can swing it, I highly recommend it.) And in between scavenging for kosher food, seeing the sights, sailing on those ubiquitous European rivers and shopping ("Zaras across Europe!") I did what I always do. I designed my usual "Jordana's Jewish tour" of whatever city I traveled. 

In Lisbon, I saw a tiny community, a Chabad that is currently closed until March, no real kosher to speak of (Gd bless their one outpost) and a generally empty synagogue. Portugal has a storied (read: horrible) history with regards to their Jewish citizens. In deference to Spain, Portugal expelled, killed or forcibly converted all their Jews in the 1500's. Jews weren't allowed back into the country for hundreds of years. Today, the Lisbon Jewish community is around 300 and the Porto community ("much bigger!" exclaims my tour guide) hovers around 400. There is also a belief that due to the widespread phenomenon of hidden or crypto-Jews, as much as 35% of the Portuguese have Jewish blood. That's great. Didn't stop me from having to send my passport in advance to be able to be let into the bulletproof gate surrounding the synagogue that, when built, wasn't allowed to face the street. Because Christianity. Moving on to Frankfurt.

Beautiful shul for a tiny community

I'm sure it's unsurprising that I may have felt some trepidation as a Jew in Frankfurt. In this particular instance, I came for one full day and stayed with a close friend who observes kosher. Which was wonderful. While my hostess took care of errands, I went to the open Jewish museum (the main one is undergoing renovation) which focused on the Judengasse- essentially the Jewish street right down the middle of the Jewish ghetto-home to all of Frankfurt's Jews for hundreds of years. And, of course, the museum was guarded by two burly, heavily armed soldiers right out front. Because, Europe.

Can you tell I was nervous to photograph the guards?

The museum is free and beautifully done and maintained. I saw relics of a time and a place long-gone. I also read stories of regular pogroms, and regular blood libels and absurdly high taxes, and forced money-lending jobs, and displacement, and otherness and Jews essentially being at the mercy of whomever the king or kaiser happened to be at the time. And this, my friends, was one hundred years before Hitler.

Thanks Germany!

Then I went to London and well, I love London. I've seen so much of it so when my host suggested I spend the morning of my last day at the permanent Holocaust exhibit at the Imperial War Museum, I jumped at the chance (it's like she was in my brain!) And as I walked through the impeccably done exhibit, I wasn't focusing as much on the stories and displays as I was on my fellow visitors. I was watching them read and ingest so much of what I already knew and have seen (I've been to Yad Vashem alone well over 25 times.) I hoped they made the connection between anti-Semitism before the war and some of what they heard about in the news today and hoped they'd try to be part of the solution.

A lot of what I thought about was those who try to deny Jews the right to their homeland, specifically anti-Zionist Jews. I had to wonder- have they been to a Holocaust museum? A European synagogue with soldiers armed to the teeth posted outside? A memorial to a ghetto where Jews were made to be outsiders, endlessly wandering with nowhere to call home? Have these people ever really understood the rootlessness, the all-consuming fear that must come from having nowhere to go? Or have they lived their whole lives in the warm embrace of an America or a Canada where they're just as accepted and just as integrated as anyone else in their neighborhood?

I'm grateful to the United States for providing Jews with a safe place to settle after thousands of years of crusades and pogroms and expulsions and Holocausts. But I never take the miracle of Israel for granted and I always feel the luckiest to live here, on my own terms. I wasn't forced to make aliyah (quite the opposite!) and maybe it just takes a quick trip to Europe or a special day like Holocaust Remembrance Day for me to realize that "Never Again" is only a reality because Jews will never be homeless again. 

In unending appreciation to the blessed US soldiers who liberated the hell that was Auschwitz, the saintly righteous among the nations, who risked their lives for other human beings, and the State of Israel, for providing a safe haven for all Jews from all places, whether they choose to live here or not. May G-d watch over you and keep you safe.