How can one not go out into nature on a sunny shabbat afternoon?  We were about to take a trip up north, the possibility of seeing a grandchild and a daughter encouraged us to change ouhr plans and go down the street to the nature reserve.  Everyone else seemed to have the same idea, and we couldn’t decide if we had to wear masks because of the crowds or breathe fresh air for our health.  

And indeed the confusion is apparent in every aspect of our lives.  Someday someone will study the differences in the traffic accidents in this period for example.  The lack of understanding and patience, in addition to the increased nervousness, make for stupid mistakes.  And this is true for many aspects of our lives now.   

Take this father we came into contact with today, for example,  We found a stone to sit down off the path, and made sure to keep Ezi masked and at a distance.  But a snot-nosed baby from a nearby picnic crawled over to play next to him.  We moved Ezi over, but it wasn’t far enough away.  And the father neither came over to take the baby, nor asked us if there was a problem with his playing next to us.  As if we weren’t wearing masks, as if there was no rule about social distance.  And we didn’t have the sense of the proper social conduct of the moment.  We didn’t know what to say to the father.  So we had to leave our comfortable place and move on.  This would not have happened in a normal situation – at the very least I would have wiped the kid’s nose.  More likely we would have all played with him, picked him up, given him an item to play with.   

Had the social rules of today been clear, the father would have kept the child from the vulnerable old man.  

I have the feeling this is true on all levels of society – and this has affected the workings of the governments, the army, the medical profession, et al.