Transcription:
COVID was awful. It was awful in every conceivable respect. It was awful for families who were denied access to their loved ones at the end because hospitals weren’t letting anybody in, and that includes staff. Staff were denied access. COVID interrupted the normal process of grief and bereavement, just like it interrupted the normal discourse that happens throughout society in every other realm. Just as people work differently today than they did before the pandemic, people have different attitudes about grief and bereavement after COVID. One thing that we were able to do, pivot and respond to the needs of COVID, was we made better use of technology. I had a patient who died, and the only person he had was his wife, and she couldn’t come to the funeral. We set up a video camera. I had her on my phone. I called her on Zoom on my phone, and normally when you’re a rabbi officiating at a funeral, you’re talking to the assembly, people who were there surrounding the grave. Not this time. I had a minyan, but I wasn’t talking to them. I was talking to the face on my phone when I was doing this graveside service. She was ill herself. She couldn’t come, but before COVID, we would use technology to livestream a funeral to people in other geographic jurisdictions, people in other parts of the country or people around the world who wanted to be part of the proceedings. Here, she was in Toronto, but she was in a hospital, and she was sick herself, but I was able to arrange that it was a Zoom with one person attending, just her, and my remarks. I was holding my phone. I was looking into the phone as I was praying, and I was saying that, you know, taking care of the liturgy so that she could be a part of her husband’s funeral. No children, no siblings, no nobody. They just had each other, and I felt that this was really why the technology was there, not so the people could check the ballgame, see what the weather’s going to be like, or see what nonsense people are posting on TikTok. This technology was created so that this woman could attend her husband’s funeral, and in my mind, that justified the creation of the technology. We’re not in charge. G-d is the only one who creates this world, maintains it, sustains life in this world each and every day. People may know a lot, and that might convey upon them a sense of control, but that control is an illusion. We need to take from the pandemic the fact that we are not in control and rely on G-d and our tradition for strength. Jewish tradition is an enormous resource of strength and inspiration. COVID has shown us that we’re not in charge, and it should be a source of inspiration to seek strength where we can find it. Our tradition is our heritage, and there’s no reason why we should not look within our own backyard, so to speak, to derive that strength.