The Eleventh Plague: Passover in the Time of Coronavirus
The front doors of Anshe Sholom B’nai Israel, an Orthodox congregation in Chicago that has closed its building since Mar. 13 to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus. Creative Commons photo by John Picken.
Jews have been telling the same story every spring for 6,000 years.
When they were slaves in Egypt, God sent ten plagues to trouble Pharaoh, each one more horrible than the last. There were frogs, locusts, boils and hail. Cattle died, water turned to blood, darkness overtook the middle of the day.
The last plague was the worst of all — a disease that felled the firstborn of every family, except in Jewish families. God warned them to smear their door lintels with lamb’s blood, a signal to the plague to pass over. After a night filled with the screams of death, the Pharaoh freed the Jews, who followed Moses out of Egypt and into a land of their own.
This year, many Jews will rewrite the Passover story from the Book of Exodus to include an eleventh plague — the novel coronavirus and the respiratory disease it causes, Covid-19. Present in all fifty states and almost every country in the world, the coronavirus and the millions of deaths it may cause, make this Passover, beginning on April 8, feel unlike any other in living memory.
There are at least five foods that go on the seder plate: shank bone (zeroa), egg (beitzah), bitter herbs (maror), vegetable (karpas) and a sweet paste called haroset. Additional bitter herbs often add a sixth item. Each food item carries meaning in the ceremony to remember the story of the Jews rescued from slavery in Egypt. Creative Commons photo by Rebecca Siegel.
“That primal Passover experience is going to be very resonant in our minds this year,” said Rabbi David Wolkenfeld, leader of Anshe Sholom B’nai Israel, an Orthodox congregation in Chicago that shut its doors on March 13 to prevent contagion. “We will be sitting at the seder table with a plague outside the door. We will all be divided in our homes with the blood on the lintel posts, just sitting in fear and not knowing when to go forth.”
The seder — the ritual Passover meal — is traditionally a commemoration of past suffering and an expression of triumph and hope. Its themes are liberation and resiliency capped with the happy declaration that next year’s Passover will be celebrated “in the Promised Land.”
Wolkenfeld notes that Jews have marked Passover in terrible times before. One elderly member of his congregation of about 300 households remembers Passover in Auschwitz. This year, he will tap into a message about reaching out in faith to help others.
“God wants us to relieve the suffering of those who are sick and the loneliness of those in isolation and do what we can to protect the flourishing of human life,” he said. “So we have the same message from God, but this year it is not put blood on the door. It’s to save lives by making sure that we stay at home.”
The real lesson, he continued, is about “the difference between being a creator and a creation. We’re not in charge. We can't control God.”
Jewish author Abigail Pogrebin. Photo courtesy of Pogrebin.
Abigail Pogrebin, author of “My Jewish Year: 18 Holidays, One Wondering Jew,” is thinking about what she calls the “democracy of vulnerability.” In the Exodus story, God tells the Jews how to survive the tenth plague by placing lamb’s blood on their houses. But the harsh reality of this Passover, Pogrebin said, is there are no guarantees.
“For me it has been very hard to fathom this idea of plagues,” she said. “It was so distant, so antiquated, I’m not sure I ever believed it. But now I believe the unimaginable thing, the thing you can’t stop, the thing you can’t control. I just think you can’t read this part of the seder the same way anymore.”
Pogrebin attends Central Synagogue, a Reform congregation in New York City that now operates only as a “virtual synagogue.” Like many Jews rethinking this year’s observance, Pogrebin will host a virtual seder — she expects 40 people — with some reinterpretation of the traditional symbolic foods on her hand-painted seder plate, a gift from her mother.
“When we talk about breaking the matzoh, I think we should talk about brokenness, and when we taste the bitter herbs we should talk about what is bitter, when we eat the egg we should ask what does renewal mean?,” she said. “What will renewal mean this year? I can’t imagine.”
She also anticipates the high spirits that often erupt in the wake of the obligatory four cups of Passover wine will be different.
“I feel like there is something a little sacrilegious in complete joy this year because we have to mark who's in trouble, who is struggling and who is in peril right now and who will continue to be after Passover because none of us is sure this will be over in April,” she said.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates U.S. coronavirus casualties could climb as high as 240,000, with a peak in mid-April — right in the middle of the eight-day Passover observance. Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin, leader of Temple Solel, a Reform synagogue near Fort Lauderdale, Fla., said those figures must be reckoned during the holiday.
“The only way to move forward with the story this year is to acknowledge the depth of our anguish,” he said.
Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin, leader of Temple Solel, a Reform synagogue near Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Photo courtesy of Salkin.
Salkin is speaking from experience — his stepmother died of Covid-19 at the end of March. But he he rejects the notion of some fundamentalist Jewish, Christian and Muslim leaders that the coronavirus was sent by God as a punishment for something they consider immoral and unacceptable.
“According to the ancient rabbinic commentators, once evil is unleashed it does not know the difference between the righteous and the evil,” he said. “In other words, there are natural forces that really could care less how good we are. Our job is to protect ourselves and others the best we can.”
South of San Francisco, Rabbi Dennis Eisner of Peninsula Temple Beth El, a Reform temple, is reconsidering the meaning of the Passover plagues. They were not calamities visited only on the Egyptians. Like the novel coronavirus, they effected everyone.
Why? To bring, he said, vast and lasting change to the status quo.
“We have to see this as a universalistic message of freedom,” he said. “It’s not my people against your people or my family against your family. We’re all in this together and we ought to mark our doors like the Israelites did in the first Passover story and say, ‘I’m in. I’m in for freedom, I’m in for kindness, I’m in for love.’”
Kimberly Winston is a freelance religion reporter whose work has appeared in The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, USA Today and more. She is the recipient of the Religion News Association’s 2018 award for best religion reporting at large news outlets.