We dodged a corona bullet a few weeks ago.

For most of the past year, my wife, Jody, and I have erred on the side of caution when it comes to staying safe from Covid-19. We have scrupulously maintained social distance, eschewed most social gatherings, and insisted that anyone coming into our home, including our adult children, mask-up when indoors. Since May, weâ€ve eaten all our family meals outside on our terrace. 

Now, with winter coming, Iâ€m at a loss as to what to do when the kids want to come visit. If itâ€s too cold or rainy outside, are we going to go back to the situation we had in the spring where we were completely isolated from our children for several months? I donâ€t think I could stand that.

Mind you, our kids are not rule-breaking party people. They want to stay healthy, too. Could we relax the guidelines, just a bit, I wondered, and enact some sort of compromise to be together indoors?

A few weeks ago, the new season of Greyâ€s Anatomy came out. Both Jody and our daughter, Merav, are big fans of the show, which now in its 17^th season has embraced a full-on pandemic narrative. Would Jody like to come over, Merav asked, and theyâ€ll watch the opening double-episode together?

Jody and I discussed it. Theyâ€d have to wear masks the entire time and keep the windows open. Still, they would be indoors, together on the same couch, for clearly more than 15 minutes. Our antimicrobial nanoparticle zinc-infused Sonovia masks are good, but they arenâ€t 100% foolproof. 

And yet, we so craved some sense of normalcy.

Two days after they had their first in-person extended indoor get-together in months, Merav WhatsAppâ€d us. She wasnâ€t feeling well. Fever, body aches, dry cough. 

My heart sank.

When Meravâ€s symptoms hadnâ€t abated after another day, she went to get a Covid test. Jody and I, meanwhile– already anticipating the worst – researched quarantine regulations. Who would walk the dog? What rooms would we sleep in?

Less than 12 hours later, Merav got her results back. Negative. She had something, but it wasnâ€t corona.

We all breathed a sigh of relief, although I insisted we give it another few days to be sure – a not insignificant portion of PCR nasal swab tests come back with false negatives. 

A week later and we were all fine. Still, it was a close call that shook us out of our corona fatigue. 

“Itâ€s really important to understand that the coronavirus hitches a ride on our trust and our love for our family and friends,” wrote Isaac Chotiner in The New Yorker. “Itâ€s actually the people we trust most whom weâ€re most likely to infect and who are most likely to infect us, because weâ€re not going to take [the] same precautions.”

The idea that we were toying with just a few days previously – that we could move our gatherings indoors for the winter â€“ now seemed hopelessly off the table. 

Or was it? We sprung into creativity mode. 

Could we still get together indoors, just not for meals? A masked board game, perhaps? But that would mean being in the same space for more than 15 minutes, just like the Greyâ€s Anatomy scare.

How about if Jody and I were to sit at one end of the table with the kids far away at the other? Or we could implement a â€œstaggered eating” protocol, where one side of the table wears masks while the other side is eating, then we reverse. 

But could anyone really keep to such an arrangement scrupulously? Moreover, doesnâ€t the virus remain in the air for a few hours, so that any mask removal is risky?

Researchers at the Riken Center for Computational Science and Kobe University in Japan used a supercomputer to model a seating arrangement that would be the least likely to spread infection if a Covid-positive person is in your midst. As reported in The Asahi Shimbun, sitting across the table is bad, they found; speaking to someone at your side by turning your head is even worse, by a magnitude of five. But diagonal spacing reduces the chances of getting hit by virus particles by 75%. 

Craig Mod wrote an in-depth article in The Atlantic in September about how he ventilates his home using high speed fans and open windows to ensure that air is circulating and virus particles canâ€t build up. Mod created his system to combat mold but notes that itâ€s applicable to Covid protection, too. 

What about adding a HEPA filter to the mix? The jury is out on whether these air purifiers really make a difference, but combined with other mitigation strategies, it could give us some additional peace of mind. 

Maybe the best bet would be to buy a couple of those restaurant-grade kerosene heaters and continue our tradition of eating on the terrace even when the temperature plunges.

Or perhaps we should simply skip meals for the next few months and go for bundled-up family dog walks.

The only thing that seems clear is that the panic those two days in November evoked, when we were kicking ourselves for taking unnecessary chances, was enough to wake us from our pandemic lassitude and set us on a more scrupulous path as we head into the most precarious period of this awful 2020.

With effective vaccines tantalizing close, now is not the time to let down our guard. 

As epidemiologist Michael Osterholm remarked pithily but providentially in The New York Times, “This is your Covid year — just get through it — then hope that next year weâ€ll be in a very different situation.”

We first dodged our corona bullet at The Jerusalem Post.

News item: The coronavirus was found in the sperm of some 13% of screened male Covid-19 patients.

* * * * *

In the end, no population was spared, but the fertility crisis hit the haredim (ultra-Orthodox) the hardest. 

At the height of Israelâ€s second wave, no one yet knew about Covid-19â€s effect on sperm count. Yes, scientists had discovered how the novel coronavirus attached itself to ACE2 receptors which are found in cells all over the body. But it wasnâ€t until back in October 2020 that the first reports appeared indicating that, because the testicles also have ACE2 receptors, they, too, were getting hit by the virus.

Still, the true extent of the problem didnâ€t show up for a few years, long after the vaccine from the Israel Institute for Biological Research finally transformed Covid-19 into a seasonal, mostly benign virus by mid-2022. 

At first, it was thought to be a result of lingering depression. We had gone through a pandemic of an unprecedented scale, leadership had gone wanting, civil liberties were no longer a given. Who would want to bring more kids into such a world?

But that wasnâ€t the attitude in ultra-Orthodox communities. The mitzva of pru urvu â€“ to be fruitful and multiply – is so important that the very thought that individuals might choose to slow down or delay having children in response to a shared global tragedy was preposterous. 

But eventually it became clear that babies werenâ€t being conceived in their pre-pandemic numbers. Young couples would try for months, even years, to get pregnant, to no avail. 

It wasnâ€t everyone, of course, but it was still a high enough percentage that it became the only thing people in the haredi world could talk about.

“Gitti and Yaakov still donâ€t have any kids. Do you think…?”

“They finally went to the doctor. It turns out itâ€s him, not her.”

“What if it runs in the family? Will we still be able to arrange a good match for our children?”

Dr. Dan Aderka of Sheba Medical Center in Israel was the first to identify that there was a 50% decrease in the volume, concentration and motility of sperm in patients with moderate disease, even 30 days post-diagnosis. Thatâ€s because the coronavirus binds to the ACE2 receptors on the surface of the Sertoli and Leydig cells in the testis, destroying the cells and causing infertility, Aderka told The Jerusalem Postâ€s Maayan Jaffe-Hoffman. The Sertoli cells support sperm maturation. The Leydig cells produce testosterone.

It was not known initially if this infertility would be temporary or long-lasting, even resulting in permanent sterility. Aderka called for follow-up exams to see if the damage “stands the test of time.”

By the mid-2020s, however, it was clear that it did. And it hit the haredim harder than the general population because of many of its leaders†unwillingness, at the virusâ€s worst point, to adhere to health guidelines. 

Mass prayer services, a refusal to mask up or social distance, continuing tisches with the rebbe became endemic, as was the controversial decision in some sectors to court infection in an aim for a kind of “herd immunity,” at least among younger yeshiva students. 

The haredi leadership has â€œa strategy for dealing with the plague,” wrote Haaretzâ€s Anshel Pfeffer. “Change nothing. It may cost more lives in the short-term, but once this is finally over, they will have preserved their institutions and communal framework.” 

If yeshivas and synagogues were closed, however, haredi power brokers†grip on their followers could be irretrievably weakened, the thinking went. After all, in April 2020, during Israelâ€s first lockdown, thousands of pupils left their yeshivot and sought out leisure activities; haredi cities reported a sharp rise in the number of homes connecting to the Internet despite rabbinical prohibitions.

That was before the fertility crisis drove home exactly what was at stake – not widespread death as a result of corona but long-term, chronic and unexpected health consequences. 

“If youâ€re ultra-Orthodox, you might start asking how you can trust leadership,” Prof. Yedidia Stern of the Israel Democracy Institute told\ The Jerusalem Post when the pandemic was still considered “just” a killer virus. â€œOnce the pure belief in their leaders is shaken, no one can anticipate what might be the ramifications of this change in the ultra-Orthodox world.”

Looking back, it was nothing less than an earthquake. 

As fertility rates dropped, a crisis of faith spread across haredi society. Increasing numbers of ultra-Orthodox men and women deluged the Israeli employment service, searching for work and retraining. Enrollment in high school matriculation courses filled up. Newly trained haredi programmers joined the tech force. The tax coffers overflowed. 

The fertility crisis had its most dramatic effect in politics where many of the newly unrooted chose to counter their formerly fierce allegiance to the religious parties and voted for the center-left. 

Yair Lapid, whose Yesh Atid party had remained in the opposition even through the fallow years of prime minister Naftali Bennett, finally found the support he needed and was elected leader of the country by a clear majority.

His first act was to pardon former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was still in the courts appealing his conviction from 2024. Lapidâ€s move shocked the now fading right wing and helped to heal a broken nation. 

By the time the pandemic of 2030 arrived, Israel was well prepared, with a robust democracy and a firm fidelity to facts that the fertility crisis had driven home.

This time, everyone wore their masks.

I first crafted this dystopian future for The Jerusalem Post.

Image from www.vperemen.com, CC BY-SA 4.0.

As the High Holy Day period heads into its final stretch, and with a second lockdown providing those of us in Israel ample time to reflect, I wanted to share a few of the messages that have helped me get through these challenging times, whether thatâ€s a result of feeling down and confused personally or as part of our collective pandemic panic. Some are expansions on themes Iâ€ve written about before; others are new. I find that repeating these as necessary, almost as “mantras,” can make a big difference. 

1. Wash the dishes. When the world and/or oneâ€s health seem out of control, I imagine a sink full of dishes. Itâ€s my role at home to wash up after meals, so Iâ€m not averse to getting soapy. But it can still be daunting after a Shabbat with lots of guests. (Remember guests?) If youâ€re methodical, though, the dishes eventually get done and the countertop is clean – for a moment. Itâ€s a Sisyphean metaphor, of course: tomorrow there will be another meal and more mess, and youâ€ll have to start over from scratch. Still, knowing that youâ€ll get everything in order, even temporarily, helps keep one from getting too overwhelmed. 

2. Patience is a virtue. Beyond the well-worn cliché, Iâ€ve found great value in not jumping to conclusions. Over the past months of Covid-19 paranoia (coronanoia?), who hasnâ€t worried that those sniffles, that unexpected cough or momentary feeling of fever was not the start of the virus with a capital V? It might well have been … or it could have been allergies, or a cashew gone down the wrong way. Waiting for a vaccine is an extreme exercise in patience – it may turn the tide, but it might not be available until well into next year, if at all. Can you wait a beat before going to, “Oh no, Iâ€m going to catch Covid and die?” Practicing wonder statements – “I wonder if thatâ€s something I should get checked out” – instead of straight-out worrying can short-circuit downward negative spirals.

3. Everyone has some discomfort every day. I had a Zoom call with a new doctor last week. As I told him about my assorted ailments, he asked, “So, is your middle name Job?” referring to the Biblical character whose faith is tested with every affliction imaginable. It was meant to be a joke (a little too on-the-nose, if you ask me) but the truth is, everyone feels varying degrees of crappiness. Maybe not all the time, but to live and, especially, to grow older comes with a price. For some itâ€s a bad back, for others cancer. For some, both. The body I had when I was 16 wasnâ€t perfect either. 

4. There are no shoulds. This was the very first life lesson I wrote about when I was diagnosed with cancer two and a half years ago and itâ€s just as relevant today. When I complained to my therapist, “This isnâ€t how my life is supposed to be,” she shot back, “Who said so?” The world as a whole is now experiencing a bad case of the shoulds – we should have used the past six months to prepare better for the second wave, we should never have opened up the schools all at once, we should have protected the elderly better. Iâ€m not here to defend bad leadership, but it helps to remember there are no shoulds in life. 

5. Seek balance over binary thinking. We have a tendency in times of trouble to think about the situation at hand as black or white – good or bad, positive or negative. And yet during this pandemic, as well as during my personal health challenges over the past several years, Iâ€ve felt both fearful and full of joy – sometimes at the same time. Embracing this kind of non-binary thinking is tough – our brains are not evolutionarily wired for it. It means living more comfortably in the gray areas, acutely experiencing both pain and elation, and constantly striving to tip the balance ever so slightly towards the latter.

6. Self-regulate. When I feel a kvetch coming on, repeating this mantra reminds me to think before expressing a gripe out loud. Itâ€s as important for me as it is for those around me (my wife, my family and friends) who can get burned out if I grumble too much. Itâ€s not that I need to go radio silent, just to turn down the volume a bit (on a radio whose anxiety level can never be completely “off”). Words that can reinforce this message include “postpone,” “pace yourself,” and “consider what to say.” 

7. Commit to the escalator. Getting through life day by day is a little like riding a department store escalator – the aim is to get to the top. Along the way, though, there are all kinds of mental concerns that pop up like shiny objects – those fancy luggage worries on the third floor or the fine cutlery distractions on the fourth. Thatâ€s OK – on some days you may have the time and inclination to hop off the escalator and take a look, even dwell there for a bit. Do you want the Samsonite spinner with two wheels or four? On other days, you may be more focused on the goal. Just know that, either way, when youâ€re done turning over the Royal Doulton knives, youâ€re committed to getting back on the escalator and continuing on your journey. After all, the restaurant there is supposed to be very high end. And I hear that itâ€s corona-free.

I first compiled this list of mantras for The Jerusalem Post.

Photo from Mysid – Wikimedia Commons

My wife, Jody, and I were invited to the wedding of the daughter of good friends. The wedding will be in the U.K. in July – 2021. 

My first reaction was – wonderful! Weâ€d love to come. An opportunity for a much-needed holiday overseas, rejoicing with friends and plentiful vegan food.

My second reaction – do we really think things will be any different a year from now? That the pandemic will be over and a vaccine will be widely disseminated and effective, such that we can return to the life we once knew?

On my gloomiest days, I doubt it. 

With every news cycle we are hit with more questions. Will the virus just fade away? (Not likely.) Become less contagious? (It seems to be doing the opposite.) Become less virulent? (Maybe…or is it just statistics?) Will we be ordered back into quarantine? (For some of us, probably.) 

Israel, which was once the poster child for how to beat a pandemic, now has one of the highest rates of new infections per capita in the world.

In order to cope with the ping pong of good news followed by harrowing aftermath – in what may very well be a repeating pattern of Whac-a-Mole over the course of months if not years – Iâ€ve started thinking of this time as our “coronavirus gap year.” 

Gap years are traditionally about students taking time off between educational institutions. This, however, is a gap year from normal life. 

Whatever we hoped and planned for the rest of 2020, weâ€d probably be better off just forgetting about. This year might not be entirely lost, but it will certainly be something “different.” 

To wit: a friend of mine who was laid off from his job was fortunate to land a new position at the height of the first wave. Itâ€s boring, he told me, and doesnâ€t come close to matching his decades of professional experience, but heâ€s grateful to have any income at all. 

Many others are not as fortunate.

My youngest son, Aviv, is debating whether to continue school in the fall. Most of his classes were switched to Zoom over the past months, which isnâ€t easy when youâ€re a musician and you need to practice in person with an ensemble. Should he pay the expensive tuition for another semester (or longer) of virtual classes?

Iâ€ve long since given up on thinking about that trip to Vietnam weâ€d planned for earlier this year. At this point, Iâ€m just hoping that my cancer stays stable until thereâ€s a vaccine for COVID-19. (My last scan showed my tumors were still there but hadnâ€t grown.) If I had to go back into treatment before then, the hit to my immune system could mean my body might not be able to handle a vaccine – if and when one becomes available. 

Is there any way to cope with the relentless despair, both personal and global, in the midst of this gratuitous gap year? 

Hereâ€s a parable Iâ€ve found helpful. It was originally written in 1987 by Emily Perl Kingsley about having a child with Down syndrome, but the metaphor works for both the corona crisis and cancer, as well. It’s called “Welcome to Holland.”

Youâ€ve planned a fabulous vacation in Italy. You bought all the guidebooks and your imagination is churning with anticipation. You can envision exactly where youâ€ll stay, the things youâ€ll do – touring the Colosseum, lounging on the Spanish Steps – even how much gelato youâ€ll consume (“just three times a week,” you promise yourself).

You pack your bags and board the plane. But when you land, the flight attendant announces, “Welcome to Holland.”

“Holland?” you cry out. “What do you mean Holland? I signed up for Italy! All my life Iâ€ve dreamed of going to Italy.” 

But thereâ€s been a change in the flight plan, and you have no choice: you must stay in Holland. No Italy for you.

Holland isnâ€t a terrible place. Itâ€s just not what you expected. So, you have to go out and buy new guidebooks and learn a new language and meet a whole new group of people. 

You could spend your vacation pining away for Italy, fantasizing about all the things youâ€re missing out on. 

Or you can accept the reality and make the most of your time. The hotel room is spacious, after all, the stroopwafels are sweet and you discover you really love chips with mayonnaise. You might even begin to notice that there are windmills and tulips and Rembrandts in Holland.

“If you spend your life mourning the fact that you didnâ€t get to Italy,” Kingsley concludes, “you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things … about Holland.”

Thatâ€s where we are now conceptually as a world with COVID-19 (and for me personally with my body not where I thought it “should” be at this point in my life). 

Weâ€re in Holland when we wanted to be in Italy. Itâ€s not the worst place to spend a vacation … or a coronavirus gap year. Amsterdam is in fact one of my favorite cities.

And who knows, maybe my pessimistic protestations will turn out to be entirely off the mark and at the end of this crazy alt-world gap year, weâ€ll all be healthy, safely vaccinated and might actually be able to fly direct from “Holland” to the U.K. to attend our friends†daughterâ€s wedding.

I first wrote about gap years and Holland for The Jerusalem Post.

Photo of Amsterdam Centraal Station by Slaunger / CC BY-SA

Photo of Buckingham Palace by Diliff / CC BY-SA

I ran into Mark while I was walking the dog one afternoon. Heâ€d been through some tough times lately including a near heart attack while he was overseas that landed him in the hospital for a month and a half upon his return to Israel. It was touch and go for a while. Now he was on all kinds of meds, his gate had slowed and, if that wasnâ€t enough, he was at high risk if he caught corona.

“I just want my body back the way it was, but I know thatâ€s not going to happen,” he lamented, while the dog rolled in the grass, oblivious to the concerns of humans. “If I didnâ€t have three little kids at home, Iâ€d be ready to move on. I have moments when I think, if I didnâ€t wake up tomorrow morning, would that really be such a bad thing?”

I tried to be the encouraging friend. “Youâ€ve worked so hard to get to this point, you canâ€t give up now!” I urged. 

The truth is, I understood him – I feel that way too sometimes. I want my pre-cancer self and the pre-corona world back. 

But I didnâ€t say any of that to him. Instead, I asked him to tell me more about how his children were doing.

Markâ€s face lit up and he seemed like another person. He launched into great detail about his three daughters, regaling me with stories about how this one was excelling in academics while another had discovered a passion for video production.

And I thought: How can that be? How could he be at the end of his rope one moment and then actively engaged in life a second later? 

How is it possible to be both fearful and in pain and also to be excited and full of joy?

Itâ€s because we as human beings are non-binary. Not in the gender identity sense of the term, but in that seeing ourselves and the world around us as being either one thing or the other is not only untrue, it doesnâ€t serve us well psychologically. 

Rather, we can – and we must – embody both hot and cold, happy and despondent in the same person. Itâ€s entirely OK to feel sad or depressed at times, as long as you remember thatâ€s not all you are.

When I first put this down in writing, it seemed like such an obvious insight, something everyone must know.

Our brains, however, beg to differ. We may actually be hardwired to think in binary.

Dr. Joe Tsien, a neuroscientist at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University proposed a few years back that the brainâ€s basic computational algorithm is organized along power-of-two logic – that is on or off; binary.

In order to grapple with “uncertainty and infinite possibilities,” Tsien writes in the journal Trends in Neurosciences, groups of neurons in the brain “form a variety of cliques to handle each basic [function] like recognizing food, shelter, friends and foes. Groups of cliques then cluster into functional connectivity motifs to handle every possibility in each of these basics. The more complex the thought, the more cliques join in.”

Eventually, the cliques resolve in such a way that the brain makes binary types of choices. 

Tsien tested his theory in seven different brain regions involved with basic functions in mice and hamsters. 

“Surprisingly, we indeed saw this principle operating in all these regions,” Tsien says. 

The brain, with its 86 billion neurons, he concludes, “may operate on an amazingly simple mathematical logic.”

While Tsienâ€s theory needs more testing, we know intuitively that much of what we do comes down to binary choices. Otherwise, how could we make an instantaneous fight or flight decision in a dark alley or choose which fork on a ski slope to take where the decision must be made in a split-second to avoid slamming into a tree?

Matthew Fisher and Frank Keil describe a similar phenomenon in a paper published by the Association for Psychological Science called “The Binary Bias,” Fisher and Keil found that people put information into one of two categories – a yes or no, an all or none. 

The Binary Bias cuts across our “health, financial and public policy decisions,” they write. It helps explain why for some people, a B+ on a test is a “fail” or why a politician is either a hero or a crook but rarely something in-between. 

DNA need not define our destiny, though. How the neurons in our brains operate donâ€t have to determine how we relate to the world outside. Binary is not always best, and in most cases, weâ€d be a whole lot healthier pushing past our predispositions.

How would that look?

For me, having a chronic cancer means that Iâ€m sick but not dying – thatâ€s non-binary thinking. 

Living in corona times means we can take all the precautions possible and still not be entirely safe. It also means we might engage in riskier behavior at times and not necessarily get sick. The virulence of the virus, it seems, is non-binary, too.

Politics has become binary, but it doesnâ€t have to be. You can be pro-annexation and still care deeply about human rights. You can wear a facemask and also be a Republican. You can fight against climate change without being branded a socialist.

Iâ€ve been thinking about calling up Mark to give him an alternative pep-talk. Every one of us has pain and joy, sometimes simultaneously, I would tell him.

Because in the end, we are not just this and we are not just that. 

We are both.

I first wrote about the binary blunder for The Jerusalem Post.

I remember exactly when the pandemic started: March 11, 2020. Thatâ€s the date the World Health Organization upgraded COVID-19 from “public health emergency” to the formal status of “pandemic.” 

In Israel, it was actually several days earlier. “We are in the midst of a global pandemic, even if this has not been declared officially,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his cabinet on March 8.

While the beginning may be a matter of public record, when this pandemic ends will be different for every individual. 

“Pandemics typically have two types of endings,” writes Gina Kolata in The New York Times. “The medical, which occurs when the incidence and death rates plummet, and the social, when the epidemic of fear about the disease wanes.”

“When people ask, ‘When will this end?,†they are asking about the social ending,” Dr. Jeremy Greene, a historian of medicine at Johns Hopkins, tells Kolata. 

In other words, “an end can occur not because a disease has been vanquished but because people grow tired of panic mode and learn to live with a disease,” Kolata sums up. “Many questions about the so-called end are determined not by medical and public health data but by sociopolitical processes.”

That pretty well describes what happened the last week in May in Israel as restaurants, synagogues, schools and stores re-opened at a dizzying pace.

Weâ€ve seen pandemics of fear abate before. Remember the Hong Kong flu of 1968, that killed a million people worldwide, including 100,000 in the United States? You donâ€t? Thatâ€s because whatever fear accompanied that flu (and in a pre-social media age, it wasnâ€t nearly as much as we see today with COVID-19) dissipated. The virus, by the way, didnâ€t disappear; it still circulates as a seasonal flu to this day.

My personal pandemic of fear around corona came to a tentative end on the Jewish holiday of Shauvot. That was the day that we allowed our children (those who didnâ€t already live with us) to come into our home for the first time in more than two months.

We didnâ€t open up because I was entirely OK with it – on the contrary, I am still quite concerned about catching the virus, even more so now with the alarming spike in infections over the last week. 

But I was exhausted shouldering the burden of being the sole gatekeeper for our family, the one on whom it constantly fell to decide – given that my cancer makes me the person most at risk in our unit – what we should wear (mask or gloves?), who can come in, when we can go meet with friends again, under what conditions.

Iâ€ve written before about balancing risk and uncertainty. Every day we know more about this virus. 

Robin Schoenthaler, an oncologist in Boston who has gathered a following for writing plainly about the pandemic, describes it like this: People talking normally – low risk. People shouting or singing – higher risk. Wearing a mask – low risk. Standing more than six feet away – low risk. Spending less than 15 minutes together – low risk. Touching packages and groceries: very low risk.

Thatâ€s “not no risk,” stresses Schoenthaler, “but lower risk.”

We are now in the second phase of Tomas Pueyoâ€s virally shared article, “The Hammer and the Dance,” where, after the pounding of the initial lockdown, we dance with precautions – mini-closures, contact tracing and quarantines when cases spike, as they inevitably will – until the virus is gone or a vaccine arrives. 

Still, it was bewildering at first. Haaretzâ€s Ofri Ilany describes the post lockdown period as “reverse culture shock … a characteristic of people who have spent a significant amount of time in a different cultural milieu, on their return to their regular environment.”

With reverse culture shock comes disorientation. In an interview with the newspaper Neue Züricher Zeitung, Swiss psychiatrist Josef Hättenschwiler notes that during lockdown, “everyday worries and hardships wereperceived as negligible in view of the immediate physical threat.” As we open up again, though, our anxieties return, whether thatâ€s exams, projects and deadlines we may secretly have hoped might be delayed or scrapped entirely because of the crisis, or the hard choices of whether, when and how to see family and friends again.

As the numbers shot up over the Shavuot holiday – mind you, the news broke after weâ€d welcomed our children home – outgoing director general of the Health Ministry Moshe Bar Siman Tov attributed the growing number of cases to an “atmosphere of euphoria and complacency.” 

Dina Kraft has another explanation. 

“Israelis are good foot soldiers when ‘under attack,†willing to listen to public safety orders like entering bomb shelters during times of war,” she writes for NBC News. Where they have trouble is “dealing with anything in the middle when it comes to a crisis.”

Kraft wonders whether Israelâ€s fast-moving return from isolation is an example of “the smart, nimble, Israeli chutzpah style” – the one manifested by the Start-up Nation – or if what weâ€re experiencing is more of a “sloppy rush that leaves Israelis more vulnerable than necessary.”

“This is completely in our control,” Bar Siman-Tov emphasized. “If we are meticulous about the rules, weâ€ll succeed in blocking the spreading of infection.” 

In that respect, maybe the uptick is a good thing – a much needed wake up call. 

But it also calls into question: did one of the pandemics – the pandemic of fear – even end last week? Iâ€m not so sure anymore. Maybe, like the medical pandemic, it too goes in waves, destined to rise and fall for many months to come.

I first wrote about pandemic beginnings and endings at The Jerusalem Post.

Face mask image from https://www.nursetogether.com/ / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)

Our family desperately wanted to spend Pesach together. But like many Jews around the world, COVID-19 was making that difficult.

When the new regulations regarding sheltering-in-place were taking hold in Israel, we had four people living at home: my wife Jody and me, 22-year-old music student Aviv who is now studying online, and our oldest son, 28-year-old Amir, who had moved back home to save money while building a startup. Our daughter Merav and her husband Gabe have their own apartment in Sderot.

As long as the four of us stayed in our lockdown, not leaving the house except to shop or walk the dog, we should have been fine. We didnâ€t know if Merav and Gabe would be able to make it home for Seder – trying to plan anything even a day in advance these days is an exercise in dashed expectations – but we figured we could read the Haggadah together on Zoom. 

The problem was that Amir has a girlfriend, Tal, and she has her own apartment – not far from ours in Jerusalem but definitely more than a 100-meter walk.

The real issue was not the distance but rather our understanding that mixing households is about the worst thing to do if you want to keep this virus at bay. Every additional person you meet means potential exposure to everyone theyâ€ve been in contact with. 

In Talâ€s case, that meant her family (in another city, so all the people from that town who her parents and siblings might have been exposed to) and Talâ€s roommate (and all the people sheâ€s been exposed to).

This was not just a theoretical exercise in how best to flatten the curve. In my case, thereâ€s real danger: Iâ€m in several of the most at-risk categories, which includes those who are over a certain age, have a pre-existing medical condition or are immunocompromised. 

My cancer is no longer in remission and past treatments have left my white blood count so depressed that if I came down with COVID-19 – at least at this early point when we still know little about how to treat the disease – I might not make it. 

Indeed, in the U.K., follicular lymphoma patients like me have been getting text messages from the National Health Service telling them to plan for a self-isolation period of up to 12 weeks. While that might not be what Israelâ€s Ministry of Health ultimately recommends, Iâ€ve been taking it seriously. I havenâ€t been out of the house for weeks and Iâ€m ready to keep that going for as long as necessary.

So, when it came to being together for Seder, no one wanted to be responsible for getting me sick. 

Clearly, given the risks, we couldnâ€t invite Tal to stay at our house, and Amir couldnâ€t go back and forth between their two apartments, especially since we couldnâ€t restrict where Talâ€s roommate might go, even if that was just to buy groceries.

That put Amir in a dreadful dilemma. He had to choose between his girlfriend and his father, both of whom he loves.

The safest thing for him to have done would be to stay at home and not see Tal – at least until Seder. I love my son but Iâ€m also quite fond of Tal and I didnâ€t want to stand in the way of their budding relationship.

The next option would have been for Amir to move in with Tal but not to come home. I would have missed him terribly, but I would understand.

Could there be a third, more out-of-the-box option? 

“What if Tal and I strictly self-quarantined ourselves for the two weeks prior to Pesach?” Amir proposed. “Weâ€d do our shopping in advance and not leave the apartment.”

The idea made a certain epidemiological sense: if they showed no signs of infection in that fortnight, which seems to be the average incubation period for COVID-19, they should be OK to come home for Seder.

But where could they self-quarantine? They couldnâ€t go to Talâ€s because her roommate presented an uncontrollable vector. They could try to rent one of the many vacant holiday apartments in Jerusalem, but that would be expensive.

What about Sderot? Merav and Gabe live in a student village attached to Sapir College. With many students now at home with their parents, there were plenty of empty apartments. Could they do their self-quarantine there? 

The irony was not lost on any of us: in order to keep me safe from coronavirus, two of my children and their partners would be living under another threat, that of missiles from Gaza.

To sweeten the pot, Merav and Gabe also volunteered to go into their own two-week self-quarantine.

Merav found a friend willing to rent out her place to Amir and Tal for a low rate. 

Before Amir left, he said solemnly, “You know that if thereâ€s a complete lockdown in place by then and the police have checkpoints at the entrances to cities, we might not be allowed to come home for Seder at all.”

“I know,” I replied. “But itâ€s the only compromise that makes any sense in this crazy time.”

The deadline for this column was several days before Pesach, so I canâ€t report how the story ends, whether the kids were able to make it for Seder or whether we were alone together on Zoom. 

But I will never forget the incredible self-sacrifice my children made to keep me safe and to give our family the best chance to be together for the holiday.

I first wrote about our Pesach calculations for The Jerusalem Post.

OK, that headline is a bit of a red herring. Iâ€m not dying now nor am I planning to any time soon. But ever since I was diagnosed with an incurable, albeit mostly treatable cancer, one that compromises my immune system and puts me in the most at risk category during the current coronavirus pandemic, Iâ€ve been thinking about death a lot. 

When the time comes, I want to be prepared – mentally at least (there may not be a whole lot I can do about it physically).

That turns out to be a challenge. Research last year from Bar-Ilan University in Israel claims that our brains may be hard-wired from childhood to shield us from thinking about our own deaths. 

Call it the “mortality paradox” – we all know weâ€re going to die someday, but our brains are not able to fully grasp the concept of no longer being alive.

“We cannot rationally deny that we will die,” the studyâ€s leader, Yair Dor-Ziderman, says. So instead, “we think of it more as something that happens to other people. When the brain gets information that links the self to death, something tells us itâ€s not reliable, so we shouldnâ€t believe it.”

The Bar-Ilan researchers developed a test where they monitored participants†brain activity while showing them photographs of themselves as well as pictures of strangers. They did this several times in succession. Half the photos were accompanied by words relating to death. The other half had no such connotation. 

The participants were then shown an entirely new face, which the brain would normally react to with a signal of “surprise,” since the image clashed with what the brain “predicted” from the previous sequence.

However, when death-related words appeared alongside the participants†own faces, their prediction systems essentially shut down, registering no surprise when the “new” face appeared. 

This dulling of the brainâ€s predictive function, the researchers posit, demonstrates the mindâ€s inability to process the idea of our own deaths.

Such an incapacity to imagine a world in which we no longer exist, despite knowing that our deaths are inevitable, has led human beings to develop a number of imaginative narratives where death is not what it seems. 

In his 2012 book Immortality: The Quest to Live Forever and How it Drives Civilization, philosopher Stephen Cave describes four main coping strategies we mortals – the “aspiring undying” – have cooked up to deal with the mortality paradox.

The first path Cave calls simply “staying alive.”

“Almost all cultures contain legends of sages, golden-age heroes or remote peasants who discovered the secret to defeating aging and death,” Cave writes. 

Since no one has ever found this long sought-after magical “elixir of life,” a second strategy has evolved. 

The “resurrection narrative” is the belief that “although we must physically die, nonetheless we can physically rise again with the bodies we knew in life.” In addition to the clear Biblical allusions, we see this reflected in the modern-day concept of cryonics, in which people pay to be frozen upon their death in the hope of one day being “repaired.” 

A third path, Cave writes, is “surviving as some kind of spiritual entity or soul,” where we give up “on this earthly frame and believe in a future consisting of some more spiritual stuff.” This is where the concept of an afterlife, a heaven or olam haba (”next world” in Hebrew) finds its most evocative expression.

The fourth and final path is “legacy,” where we achieve life after death through our creative works or the influence we have on the world even after weâ€re gone. 

“The Greeks believed that culture had a permanence and solidity that biology lacked,” Cave writes. “Eternal life therefore belonged to the hero who could stake a place for himself in the cultural realm.” 

From the view of science, our genes, as continued through our children, are both a legacy and a kind of immortality, since DNA represents “a traceable line to the very beginnings of life and, if we are lucky, [one that] will also continue into the distant future,” Cave says.

Caveâ€s four paths are intellectually engaging, to be sure, but they havenâ€t really helped me all that much in getting comfortable around my future non-existence.

Thatâ€s because my biggest fear about death may be a much more familiar one: Fear of Missing Out. FOMO “is very often at the heart of people’s fear of being dead,” says Dr. BJ Miller, a palliative care physician at the University of California, San Francisco Cancer Center and the co-author of the book A Beginner’s Guide to the End.

When it comes to death, FOMO is about “all the things youâ€re not going to get to see,” Miller said on an episode of the NPR program Fresh Air, and “the idea that the world’s going to continue on without you.”

But FOMO around death can be turned on itself, Miller continues. It points us “very squarely towards all the things we love and care about. And then that becomes a nice compass for our way forward – how we’re going to live until we die.” The things weâ€re afraid weâ€re going to miss out on are exactly where “we should uptick in terms of our attention now.”

That wonâ€t necessarily help us break past the mortality paradox. And itâ€s little hard to do all the things you love when youâ€re in an extended COVID-19 lockdown. But itâ€s a clever reframing that provides some small comfort when facing the ineffable. 

I first began my preparations for death at The Jerusalem Post.

As COVID-19, the disease caused by the new SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, transitions into a global pandemic, numerous countries have enacted varying degrees of travel bans and quarantines.

Israel has taken some of the earliest, most severe steps in the world, banning travelers from affected regions, canceling public events and conferences, placing tens of thousands of potentially infectious travelers in 14-day home quarantines, and recommending that Israelis not fly abroad for the time being, prompting pictures shared to social media of an eerily empty Ben-Gurion Airport.

Many Israelis are up in arms over the disruption to their lives the new regulations are causing. 

They have some reason to be skeptical.

Travel bans simply donâ€t work for these kinds of respiratory viruses “because they move too quickly,” says Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “I think this virus will turn up everywhere because thatâ€s how respiratory viruses tend to spread.”

Harvard epidemiology professor Marc Lipsitch predicts that within the coming year, some 40 to 70 percent of people around the world will be infected with COVID-19, although he emphasized in an article in The Atlantic that most will have mild disease or be asymptomatic. By this time next year, he quipped, “cold and flu season” could become “cold, flu and COVID-19 season.” 

A 2014 British meta-analysis on the effect of travel restrictions on influenza outbreaks concluded that bans slowed disease spread by no more than 3%. But that may be enough to stop a country-wide outbreak that overwhelms the medical system. If we can push the full contagion off until after the “regular” winter flu season – to “flatten the curve” – the thinking goes, it may be more manageable.

Iâ€d like to suggest another reason why Israel has been so extreme in its approach: a long-standing fear of the other.

The new coronavirus is highly triggering to the Jewish peopleâ€s collective memory – it reminds us of all those in our past who have tried to wipe us out (even if this time itâ€s not a nation doing the killing). The holiday of Purim only reinforces that message.

Now that we have our own state, we Israelis are hyper aware of anyone – or anything – coming to harm us; our commitment to “never again” means that Jewish survival has become one of our ultimate imperatives.

While that may provide some explanation for whatâ€s happening in the country, there is still something unsettling about Israel shutting itself off from the world and turning into a ghetto of its own making.

I know weâ€re talking about a health ghetto whose borders are intended to save lives. But there have been less savory examples of “others” that recent Israeli governments have tried to keep out: refugees from Africa, immigrants with Jewish backgrounds deemed “questionable” by the rabbinate, leftists whose political activism is seen as threatening. 

This is clearly not an approach that I support. So, should it also impact my views on COVID-19 prompted bans and quarantines?

Iâ€ve found myself ping-ponging over the last few weeks – at times defiant (“bans are stupid”), other times appreciative (as someone who is immunocompromised from cancer treatment, Iâ€m in the group thatâ€s most vulnerable to coronavirus complications). 

Thereâ€s a lesson from Israelâ€s recent past that may help guide us through this confusing period. Letâ€s treat COVID-19 as we do terror attacks.

How do Israelis respond to bus bombings and stabbings and rockets? By continuing to live our lives. 

Sure, during the Second Intifada, we took precautions. We made sure to frequent cafes with armed guards and kept the keys to our bomb shelters handy. Tourists were wary, but many still came. 

Terrorism didnâ€t break us. Nor should the new coronavirus. 

Terror attacks – like viruses – can arise at any point. Missiles from Gaza, Lebanon and Syria are always poised to be launched, but that hasnâ€t stopped us from going about our daily activities, just like we donâ€t think twice about driving our cars on Israelâ€s dangerous roads. Itâ€s how we compartmentalize risk in the Middle East.

That doesnâ€t mean we should ignore the Ministry of Healthâ€s advisories. If I were to come in contact with someone who had the virus, I would of course accede to the Ministryâ€s regulations.

Depicting COVID-19 as a viral terrorist confounds the narrative of fearing the other. It allows us to think logically – from experience – not out of hysteria.

Indeed, much of the strategy to contain COVID-19 seems driven by panic. Itâ€s like when two airplanes crash in quick succession. 

“Flying suddenly feels scarier – even if your conscious mind knows that those crashes are a statistical aberration with little bearing on the safety of your next flight,” writes Max Fisher in The New York Times. With the new coronavirus, weâ€re focused on the fatalities, not on the 98% of people who are recovering or who had mild cases. 

Thatâ€s why, when a friendâ€s mother died recently, we went to the shiva. A few days later, we attended a house concert (with just 30 people) of a lovely new indie folk band (shout out to Saltwater). At the same time, weâ€ve adopted a form of greeting that I promoted in this column already two years ago when I started chemotherapy: elbow bumps instead of handshakes. Now itâ€s public policy. 

Iâ€m not trying to be fatalistic. Obviously, if the situation deteriorates, Iâ€ll not stand on chutzpah or ceremony. (I wouldn’t go to that shiva or house concert now.)

Still, I hope that a smart balance can demonstrate that “fear of the other” is not the inevitable epigenetic legacy of the Jewish peopleâ€s millennia-long shared trauma and that there are better ways to formulate a response to these challenging times.

This column was submitted for publication a week before it appeared in the Friday Jerusalem Post. So much has changed in the ensuing days, including my then skeptical attitude towards bans and quarantines. But the main points – the influence of Jewish “fear of the other” and treating coronavirus like a terror attack – still remain worth considering.

Image from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), National Institutes of Health (NIH)

“If your fever spikes to 100.4° Fahrenheit (38° Celsius), you need to get to the ER right away.”

That was the mantra from my doctor that has haunted me since I began treatment for follicular lymphoma two years ago. So, when my temperature rose to 100.3° during my recent bout with pneumonia, I rapidly descended into a full-on panic.

I popped the thermometer in and out of my mouth every 10 minutes. I took a hot shower; my temperature went up. I downed a couple of Acamol (Israeli-branded paracetamol); it went down a notch. 

Throughout it all, my wife, Jody, was by my side, but she didnâ€t know any better than me whether we should stay at home or head to Hadassah. Ever since my immune system got pummeled by chemotherapy, we were in uncharted territory.

Eventually, my temperature dropped into the 99°s and I felt safe enough going to bed. In the morning, my fever was down further and stayed that way as the antibiotics finally kicked in.

On a purely physical level, I felt like Iâ€d dodged a bullet. My cerebral response was more extreme, like an anxious clown being shot from a cannon under the big top of my brain. 

Now that it was over, I couldnâ€t help but wonder: Was it all necessary? Could there be another way to approach such uncertainty the next time it arises?

Sometimes, itâ€s the most overused expressions that turn out to be the best way to internalize a new behavior. “Patience is a virtue” is one of those.

Patience is something I have traditionally had little of. I want things to be solved fast. A fix for that computer glitch now. A solution for my cataract complications immediately. 

But hereâ€s the thing about patience: unless itâ€s an emergency – like a heart attack or a rapidly growing tumor where you canâ€t afford to take risks – usually if you give something a little space, thereâ€s a good chance it will go away without further intervention. 

Three years ago, when I first started getting the terrible stomach pains that ultimately led to my cancer diagnosis (but that turned out not to be connected to it), I had zero patience. On one particularly bad night, I begged Jody to take me to the emergency room. 

The doctors hooked me to an IV and the pain abated. But there was nothing wrong that the doctors could see. So, was it the drugs … or just the benefit of time?

A few months later, when the same pain arose again, I chose a different path. I was in agony for hours. But I didnâ€t go to the hospital and the distress eventually passed. 

The first time the expression “patience is a virtue” appeared in English was in a poem called Piers Plowman written by William Langland around the year 1360, although Its origins date back even further – to Cato the Elder who included it his popular Latin textbook of wisdom. 

As with most things we know are good for us, getting there is easier said than done. How does an impatient person cultivate more space – especially when panic can handily overwhelm any attempt at maintaining mindfulness?

Perhaps the first step is to understand that sheer will is not enough. “You want to train, not try, for patience,” Dr. Sarah Schnitker, an associate professor at Baylor University who researches patience, told The New York Times. “Itâ€s important to do it habitually.” 

One way is to practice patience during less intense situations, where the stakes are not as high. For example, if your impatience is triggered by standing in line at the grocery store, see if you can interrupt the stress cycle. Designate a specific game on your phone or a particular podcast that you call up in those circumstances. 

“If you do it on a daily basis,” Schnitker says, patience “can grow and develop just like a muscle.” 

Cognitive reappraisal can also be helpful. 

“Feeling impatient is not just an automatic emotional response,” writes Kira Newman for the University of California Berkeleyâ€s Greater Good Science Center website. “It involves conscious thoughts and beliefs, too.”

Schnitker gives an example of how to cognitively reframe an experience. If youâ€re struggling to be patient with your child, ask yourself about the “big picture: Why is being a parent an important role to you? What does that mean in your life?” Similarly, if youâ€re aggravated by a co-worker, think about the times youâ€ve been the one who has frustrated others. 

My son, Amir, suggested a different approach. 

“Youâ€re already too much in your head. You need a more spiritual practice,” he said. 

Spiritual doesnâ€t only signify religious observance. Yoga, meditation or even exercise can also work. 

What about a “spiritual partner?” I proposed; a like-minded coach, someone with whom youâ€re on the same page, who can hold you accountable to practicing patience. 

Someone like Jody.

After the fever incident, Jody and I made a deal. 

“When you see me start to panic, I want you to tell me to take 20 or to take 60 minutes and weâ€ll revisit then,” I submitted solemnly. “Iâ€ll go and do something – Iâ€m not sure what. Maybe Iâ€ll write, maybe Iâ€ll watch TV or walk the dog. The point is, through this agreement, Iâ€m giving you permission to say that to me and Iâ€m promising Iâ€ll do my best to listen and follow through.”

Will it work? I guess weâ€ll have to practice patience and wait to find out.

I first practiced patience at The Jerusalem Post.

Picture from Sam Holt (Wikimedia Commons).