At least twice a day we get phone calls from organizations checking to see if we’re all right or need something. We may be among the very few who do not, but the fact that the health clinic, the municipality, and numerous individuals check in to see how we are is pretty remarkable. The isolation that characterizes the nature of this disease has probably killed more people than the disease itself and it has emphasized the need for interrelations, for caring about each other. Even the fact that our actions – our success or failure to protect ourselves – influence the lives of other, something we have not been sufficiently aware of for decades – is something that now is becoming more central in our minds.

The numerous television spotlights on individuals who have been experiencing incredible grief and hardship comfort me even as it brings me to despair. We CARE that a 39-year-old man has thrown the contents of his shoe store into the street because he can’t pay rent anymore. And he found comfort in the fact that the shoes were picked up by needy people – even though he has no idea what will happen to the rest of his life.

And somehow this gives me just a bit of hope. Maybe it’s not going to be a jungle even though our Knesset is doing everything possible to make it one. Maybe the people WILL get together to make the situation of this civilization possible. I know our politicians have been terrible examples, causing chaos wherever they interfere, instead of taking responsibility for order and unity, but it really appears that human beings can be so much better than this, and maybe we’ll figure out that left and right are the same, that Arab and Jew are the same, that Black and White are the same, even if only we are dependent upon one another to maintain our own existence. Remember the line i repeat every once in a while in these pages from Alexander Pope: “Man, like the generous vine, supported lives/ The strength he gains is from the embrace he gives.” I know Pope got blasted for that poem of his. He was trying to talk about how critics and writers have to work together to make for a better culture, but he got pounced upon for being a little, ugly, outsider. that too is a lesson for us.