The Jewish People in a Post-Covid World: Finding Hope Beyond The Darkness

A Livestreamed Conversation

Rabbi Sacks in Conversation with Rabbi Efrem Goldberg and Rabbi Steven Weil on 21st April 2020, hosted by the Orthodox Union.

[Preamble… ]

Host, Naftali: Today's presentation is dedicated as a refua for a complete recovery for all of those impacted by COVID-19 or by any illness, whether it be physical, emotional, and or mental, and for all of those affected financially. May Hashem please send a healing for all of those who need it, safeguard and protect all of us, all of his people, and all of his creations, and provide the financial stability to those in need. Additionally, we would also like to honour our wonderful heroes, and now we truly know who they are.

Our unbelievable medical professionals who are on the front line combating this virus despite the great risk to themselves, our amazing Rabbanim for their tireless leadership, and to employees at supermarkets around the world, as well as the delivery drivers who are ensuring we continue to receive all of the essentials that we need. Thank you to all the special people who make this world the special place that it is, and we live in a great world, a really special great world. On behalf of the OU, it is my great honour to introduce three very special rabbis who simply do not require an introduction.

So with that, I will not take any more time. It is my esteemed honour to welcome Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, Rabbi Efrem Goldberg, and Rabbi Steven Weil, and thank them in advance for being a part of today's program, and for all they do on behalf of Am Yisrael. And with that, I pass the baton to Rabbi Weil.

Rabbi Weil: Thank you. Thank you very much, Naftali. On behalf of the OU family, it's an honour to spend the afternoon with everyone, even though we're doing it through social media.

We want to thank on behalf of the OU family, Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, and we refer to him as Chief Rabbi. In America, once a Chief Rabbi, always a Chief Rabbi. Rabbi Sacks, over the course of the last eight weeks, whether it's your philosophical works, whether it's your works on ethics, your parasha works, you've ultimately been our friend, and you've taken us by the hand as we've been in quarantine, and opened up vistas to every one of us.

And to Rabbi Goldberg. Rabbi Goldberg, in everyone's book, if you're not the top community rabbi in the world, you're in the top two or three in everyone's list. And it's your Shabbat HaGadol drashas that over the course of the last 15 years, that now have been disseminated, people who couldn't attend the Shabbat HaGadol drasha, spent their Pesach, having you take them by the hand, educate them and open vistas into what this holiday means, and into what this time of reflection means.

The first question we'd like to ask of the Chief Rabbi, of Rabbi Sacks, and of Rabbi Goldberg. We have this concept in Judaism called shomer p’taim Hashem. It's a phrase based upon the verse in Psalms - David HaMelech - that God protects those who don't necessarily put themselves in the ideal position.

And ramifications of that are, it enables us to build bridges, to build highways when we know there are going to be casualties on such projects. It enables us to set up traffic laws, where instead of everyone driving 40 miles per hour, for the sake of expedience, we can drive 60 miles per hour. And there are many, many manifestations of that.

That very challenging concept, as it manifests itself today, to every one of us, whether on this side of the pond in the United States, that side of the pond in England, or wherever we are on God's earth. And the question is the tension, the conflict, between on the one hand, keeping people safe and healthy, versus on the other hand, the economic, the emotional, and the psychological downfall of our society by remaining in quarantine for another eight, 10, 12 weeks. And Rabbi Sacks, Rabbi Goldberg, not to answer this as a doctor who works at the NIH or the CDC, but from a hashkafic, from a philosophical perspective, dealing with that tension between the long-term benefit and welfare of our society, and at the same time, the short-term concern of trying to protect us. Rabbi Sacks. 

Rabbi Sacks: Rabbi Weil, bear with me if I analyse this with some differentiation here, because people are getting very, very confused by this. And therefore, I want to answer it as precisely as I can.

And it's a question that comes at three different levels. Level one, the simplest, which takes priority, saving life or economic considerations? On that, there's no question. Pikuach nefesh overrides all but three mitzvot in the Torah - shfichat damim, gilui arayot ve’avoda zara, none of which are relevant here. Saving individual life takes priority.

I don't know if we are fully aware of the miracle we have seen in these last three months. Virtually every single country in the world has taken the same decision. In other words, to establish a lockdown until there are clear signs that the peak of the infections and the deaths has passed.

This is one of the most extraordinary moments in all of human history. Judaism came into the world, in the brit of Bnei Noach, proclaiming the sanctity of individual life - “Shofech dam ha’adam be’adam damo yishafech, ki be’tzelem elokim asa ha’adam.” This was in massive contrast to the ancient empires satirised or dramatised in the Torah in the terms of the Tower of Babel and the monumental building projects of the Egyptians.

We know that in both projects, thousands of lives were lost, as they were lost, for instance, in the great building projects of the Mayans and the Aztecs. Individual life didn't count. But not only in ancient times. In the 20th century, between 10 and 20 million people died in the name of Stalinist Russia and communist China, in the name of economic dogma. As Stalin said, one person dies, that's a tragedy. A million people die, that's a statistic. For the first time in all of history, the sanctity of individual life has been taken as a priority by every single country in the world.

That is, number one, a real miracle. Number two, there's a different question, which is a conflict between immediate, present people at risk of death and possible future risks of death, as a result, for instance, of economic shortages or whatever. And here, Judaism again, halachically, says quite simply that the choleh b'faneinu, the concrete individual, the actual emergency in front of us, takes priority over possible future emergencies.

Those two are ethically clear. The third thing that is not clear is how you balance the health risks in the long term against the economic damage and the psychological damage in the longer term. Halachically, they belong to something called hilchot medina, or what we would call public policy decisions. And those are based less on clear moral principles as on likely consequences, the weighing of alternative maybes. And here, there is no clear halachic answer. Different countries have taken different policies.

Holland and Sweden have been more relaxed than most other countries. Different states in the United States have taken different policies. To judge that, we need wisdom, because there's no simple, ethical, clear-cut answer.

And for that, we're dealing in matters about which Chazal spoke about when they said these are things mishum tikkun olam, or darchei shalom, and so on and so forth. Those are the long-term issues, and we can debate those. That needs a lot of wisdom, a lot of careful judgement.

But the fact is that no country in the long run is going to be the first honouring life at stage one and stage two. The final thing that has to be added is this fundamental halachic principle. You only have to make an ethical decision if you can't fulfil both.

And here, I think in the long run, we're going to say a strong economy allows us to create a strong health system. So it's not a matter of either or, but both and. But first, we have to see a clear decline in the numbers of new infections and in deaths before we can say it's safe to come out of lockdown.

Rabbi Weil: Thank you very much, Rabbi Sacks. Rabbi Goldberg? 

Rabbi Efrem Goldberg: First of all, I want to echo Naftali's thanks to all the people who put this together. And for me, it's incredibly humbling and what a great honour to be on this panel. Rabbi Weil was a high school teacher of mine, and continues to be a mentor of mine. And Rabbi Lord Sacks is a hero and teacher of all of ours and all of humanity. And so to be together is truly a great honour.

That was a brilliant analysis, as anticipated. And I don't really have a lot to add, only to say that in that third area that Rabbi Sacks delineated for us, trying to measure and evaluate the impact of a closed and shutdown economy is not only a financial measure, but as he alluded to, it's a measure also of psychology, of emotion. I did something that I've never done before. Many of my colleagues did as well, and we're grateful to Rabbi Willig and others who gave us the broad shoulders to lean on to do it, which is I gave out my phone number before the first days and the last days of Pesach, and even this past Shabbat, and made clear that in a situation where a person felt was a real crisis, a life-threatening crisis - unintentionally left it ambiguous - people should be in contact. And each time I spoke on the phone. My children were shaking watching me on the phone, and it was a real teachable moment for them. But while there were real questions, medical questions, equally important were individual people who called me because they felt entirely alone, at risk for themselves, in a state of trauma and crisis and breaking down.

One of them doesn't even live in our community. I know him, and he was going to call the Amudim hotline. Amudim very heroically set up a hotline for the Orthodox community. I'm not used to making phone calls to Orthodox institutions on a holiday, but he said, why should I call and speak to a stranger? I know you, I called you, and I was grateful he did.

He gave me an opportunity for a few moments to do the best I could to reassure, to offer camaraderie and companionship. My point is this, the shutdown country, the shutdown economy, the shutdown society, has financial consequences and impact, but also does for very real people in real lives. And that's what Rabbi Sacks said so brilliantly. We have to turn to those who are wise, who are knowledgeable, who are experts, to help us evaluate those moving parts, those variables, to understand the consequences and the unintended consequences and the unanticipated consequences, even beyond what we see in front of us.

I'll just also add, hashkafically, this notion of the tension of the individual and of the community expresses itself in a lot of realms. Every time Rav Asher Weiss, in his teshuvot, talked about can a person, a medical person, can they lie and say they have symptoms or there are symptoms in their home, to avoid going into the hospital or serving on Hatzalah where they'll be at risk, to take care of their own safety? And in his analysis, he says, how could you have a modern State of Israel with a police force and an army and medical personnel and firemen and firewomen, if every time everyone had a personal risk, they instead shut down. You couldn't operate as a society.

So the entire IDF, our heroes in the Israel Defense Forces, the medical personnel that Naftali spoke about, everyone's taking personal risks. They are, so to say, participating in an open part of society in order to protect society as a whole. 

And lastly, I'll say, I saw a fascinating story, a cover story of Business Week a few months ago, about Tesla and the notion of the automated cars, that ultimately, if the whole world were to move to these automated cars, they're much safer. There's much less error than human drivers. The problem is to get to that point and that level, it will cost human lives. Because in order to calibrate and correct, in order to elevate the entire system, the operating system of cars, to a point where it will in fact be safer than human drivers and human error, it will cost human life.

And it's a fascinating analysis. Do we expend human life in order to preserve a greater amount of human life going forward? So while we are acutely filling the question now, it's not particular to now, it is a broader question in general. 

Rabbi Sacks: If I can just add, may I just add? 

Rabbi Weil: Please, please.

Rabbi Sacks: We are seeing certain halachic principles or meta-halachic principles right now - as Rabbi Goldberg was reminding me - that we should never forget. Number one, Choni Ha’me’agel: “Or chevruta or mituta.” Being in face-to-face presence with a friend is life itself. And that's why isolation is so devastating.

Secondly, I'm sure you know this, the words lo tov appear only twice in the whole Torah. Lo tov heyot adam levado, it is not good to be alone. And when Yitro comes and sees his son-in-law Moshe Rabbeinu leading alone, he says, “lo tov ha’davar asher ata oseh.” You can't lead alone, you can't live alone.

Those things are really, really being borne home to us. And we thank Hashem for creating Facebook and Zoom and goodness knows what else just in time for this particular moment. But at the same time, it's that immediate personal presence that the Torah and Chazal saw as life itself. “Or chevruta or mituta.” And I hope when all this is over, we will come to re-evaluate the sheer importance of chevruta and kehilla

Rabbi Weil: Rabbi Sacks, thank you. And that's really a segue into the second question that we would like to ask the two of you.

These past six weeks, they've been an opportunity for incredible introspection, for reflection, as we all remain in quarantine. What are the areas that each of you would encourage people to focus on and to reflect upon? Which ethical areas, which theological issues? Does this particular quarantine in this particular state in our lives, in humanity, facilitate, so to speak, a catharsis, an opportunity for us to grow and to become better Jews, better human beings, both on a theological and on an ethical level? Rabbi Sacks. 

Rabbi Sacks: Look, I'm going to speak very personally, because perhaps each of us has our own answer.

Number one, speaking personally, I have come, on several occasions in my life, eyeball to eyeball with the angel of death. And I've been through quite difficult, life-threatening conditions and life-saving operations. And the thing that carried me through was very, very simple.

Beyado afkid ruchi.

You know, when you're surrounded by danger, there is an ultimate declaration of faith. Ribbono shel Olam, I place my life in Your hands, because You know better than I do. Whether You need me up there, or You need me still down here, I trust Your decision. And I have to tell you, that takes all the fear away. 

Secondly, a sense of real gratitude. I mean, here we are in a situation where, Baruch Hashem, we did have lockdown in time. And although many, many casualties have occurred throughout the world and within the Jewish community, nonetheless, I say every single day, with added kavana, modeh ani lefanecha, thank You Hakadosh Baruch Hu for giving me back my life. 

Third, this may seem difficult. And please don't do it if it sounds difficult. But at really, really tough times in my life, I thought of Victor Frankl, Edith Eger, hundreds of them, several of them in the present situation, that puts everything else in perspective. I have to say, this is suffering? You know, compared to what they went through.

And all of a sudden, the whole sort of danger, the whole fear level is dampened, because I knew so many survivors, and I knew what they went through. And I realised that I'm not facing anything like they felt. 

Fourthly, when you're on your own, this is a real chance to talk person-to-person to Hakadosh Baruch Hu. That's the one advantage of tefillah b'yachid over tefillah b'tzibbur. I mean, there are very few, but that is one of them. And the way to do so is certainly through Sefer Tehillim, or through tefillah itself, the normal seder tefillah, but just slowing it down, which you can't do b'tzibbur.

So for instance, what really touches me these days, is I read that Hakadosh Baruch Hu is boneh Yerushalayim Hashem, nidchei Yisrael yechanes - God is orchestrating history. And moneh mispar ha’kochavim ve’kulam shemot yikra, He is the creator of the cosmos.

But in between those two things, God is Ha’rofeh lishvurei lev u’mechabesh le’atzvotam, what Rabbi Goldberg was talking about. Healing the brokenhearted and ministering to their wounds. And when I say that line, I can say it so slowly now, Baruch Hashem, and it really touches me. HaKadosh Baruch Hu is healing my broken heart.

And finally, just for me personally, music is very, very powerful. If I can't be lifted by the tzibbur, at least I can be lifted by music. And there's one… Ishay Ribo, I don't know if you are familiar with him, but he actually wrote and recorded a song during the coronavirus pandemic called Keter Melucha, which is a very, very special, spiritual piece of music.

And he's asking, ‘HaKodesh Baruch Hu, ma ata rotzeh she’nilmad mizeh, ma ata rotzeh she’navin mizeh?’ What is it that you want us to learn from all this? There's some wonderful, wonderful spiritual music coming out of Israel. And I recommend that you listen to it because it's really very sublime. It comes from the heart. And it lifts tefillah and it helps you on that journey towards HaKadosh Baruch Hu, which can sometimes be more intimate and more powerful alone than it can in a congregational setting. 

Rabbi Weil: Rabbi Goldberg?

Rabbi Goldberg: Rabbi Sacks, that's why we all love you and admire you, not only for the brilliance of your mind, but for the sensitivity of your heart and sharing with us those uplifting reflections.

I also wanted to speak a little bit personally in sharing what I've been reflecting on and what I hope that we will not only individually, but collectively, organizationally, and as a people. This is a global crisis and we are part of the greater humanity, but there are also reflections that we can have as a Jewish people within a concentric circle, an Orthodox community, even from within a further concentric circle. The reflection Rabbi Sacks articulated of gratitude and of faith, of course, and I'll just draw a contrast very personal to me.

My first cousin's husband is a great Talmid Chacham, from Lakewood, New Jersey, Rabbi Zalman Hillel Fendel, published many sefarim -  humble, modest, brilliant. The son of Rabbi Zechariah Fendel, you may be familiar with his works. He was struck with the illness and literally a few days later, his neshama was taken from this world.

He left 12 children, six of whom were married and six of whom not yet married, and leaves my dear beloved first cousin as a widow. It's simply incomprehensible, it's unimaginable. Why? It leads to so many questions and crises of faith.

Of all people, someone so extraordinary, and I think all of us are struck, particularly in this time, we're mourning the students of Rabbi Akiva, wondering how could God take scholars, righteous students of Torah? And we're seeing - disproportionately, it seems at least - the list of Jewish communal leaders, of people of extraordinary accomplishment and righteousness. It's so painful, and it brings about so many questions. But I'll tell you, you know, when his breathing was so laboured, and Hatzala took him to the hospital, which unfortunately they were unable to help him there after a few days, but it was a Friday evening, and they asked him, what do you want before you leave? And he said, I just want to give a bracha to my children. And he blessed each of his children, gave a bracha to each one of them, and they asked him, do you want to bring anything? And he said, I just want my gemara.

And he left this world in his hospital room, all he had was his gemara, and he left interacting with his family, having given each of them a bracha, and that to me captured, as a model of faith, a model of strength and courage, that we can ride the coattails of people who, even in those waning moments, were able to display that. But nothing else mattered at that point. Not the size of someone's portfolio, not their home, the car they drive, not how many followers or friends they have on social media.

And I contrast that with my wife's first cousin, 34 years old, who spent three weeks on a ventilator, and because of the incredible advocacy of his wife, and endless prayer, and amazing medical personnel, came home today to a hero's welcome. After three weeks on a ventilator, please God, on the road to a full recovery. And the video taken, neighbours were outside playing music and welcoming him, and as he embraced his children he hadn't seen in a month, three weeks of which he was literally unconscious, there's nothing else that matters. All that matters are the core fundamental things that we have, and I fear how quickly that will move on, how quickly we'll forget, but hopefully this time is an opportunity to reflect. And you know, if a person has their health, and we have some level of income, then all of our problems are first world problems.

Making Pesach for the first time, having finished everything there is to watch online, feeling bored, the struggle of homeschooling, they're real problems, I don't mean to minimise them or negate them entirely, they are somewhat real problems, but we have to see them in the context in which they belong and be grateful that we don't have the problems of others. 

But I want to briefly just share what I think are other reflections we can all have. This notion that we're all seeing, and I described the pain, the loneliness of the person who lacks interaction, camaraderie. In this week's parasha, Tazria, we have a pasuk of punishment for the one who speaks ill of another, their punishment is to be alone, “baddad,” to be alone.

Rav Zalman Tzorotskin, in his “Oznayim LaTorah,” a great Rav in Poland before the war, Israel after the war… you have to see this commentary inside in Oznayim LaTorah. He does something I wouldn't have predicted he would do, but he says why is that the punishment, the consequence? Because when you speak ill of another, you've isolated them and you need to know what that's like. You have to experience just how painful and just how punitive isolation is. And then he says, if you want the best example of this, he says, “If you want to know how painful it is,” he says, “see the book Robinson Crusoe, who's isolated alone on an island and describes the pain of isolation.”

It's fascinating looking at Oznayim LaTorah as he spells it out. But one of the reflections we have to have is, the people who are alone are not only alone during coronavirus. They're often alone for Shabbat meals. They're often forgotten. They're often not invited. They're often neglected. And I think one of the reflections we as a community have to have when we, please God, come out of this, is not only in times of crisis, how do we ensure sensitively people are alone, but even when we're operating at full steam, how do we have a focus on the people that are alone? 

Number two. I think that there's a major reflection, evaluation that has to happen, the speed with which the Jewish community responded - and I won't elaborate, but different segments of the community responded in different response times, at different intensities, with different levels of leadership.

I think we have to talk about in advance and plan, because more crises will come up. How do we react? How do we make decisions? Whom do we empower with those decisions? What are the experts that we consult with those decisions? How coordinated are our reactions and the timeline within our greater Jewish community? One of the beautiful things we've seen that I hope will only be built upon and continue are several statements co-authored and signed by Agudah, OU, RCA, Lakewood, Young Israel. I don't remember in my young lifetime seeing that, and I hope that that won't be reserved for a crisis.

I hope the different segments of the community that heretofore have not fully collaborated, will find our ability to do it, not only in response to crisis, but proactively in healing and repairing our world as well. 

And lastly, I'll just say this as a point of reflection. There was a recording that went around - called viral in a good way in our world. I don't know who the speaker was, who spoke all about in the voice of God, what God is telling us. Our celebrations are too elaborate and ostentatious, Hashem says you can't have them go home. Our kiddush and gluttony, God says you can't have it, stay home.

And I tell you, while many were inspired, I was deeply pained, because anyone who uses this opportunity to pretend or proclaim that they know why God does what He does, to me is a statement and act of heresy. 

Our responsibility as leaders is not to blame. Our responsibility as leaders is not to make you feel guilty. I think - and I'm interested in what Rabbi Sacks has to say - our responsibility as leaders is to empower and to challenge, to uplift and to elevate. You can draw the very same lessons about how we can become more modest in our lifestyles and in our celebrations, but you can present it not pretending you are the voice of God who can explain why, but present it as a challenge to the community to be able to respond and be the best version of ourselves with the lessons we've learned from this. 

In the words of Rav Hirsch, not to get caught up in the lama, why did this happen, and to think one is God to give the answer, but the lema, how can we grow, what can we gain? There are many points of reflection individually and collectively.

I hope we will pause, maybe now during the crisis is not the time, but I hope we won't rush back to life of the euphoria and we'll at least pause to meet and to think and to reflect about what we can learn and grow. 

Rabbi Weil: Thank you very much, Rabbi Goldberg. Our final topic, our final topic of discussion, is the following question. I'm going to ask each, both Chief Rabbi Sacks, Rabbi Goldberg, if you could paint an idealistic portrait. We're not talking about what is, we're talking about in your perfect world. If you could paint an idealistic portrait of the post-COVID-19… to Rabbi Sacks, if you could focus on the world community, the greater community, please as well feel free to answer this vis-a-vis the Orthodox community. And Rabbi Goldberg, when you answer, possibly if you could focus on the Orthodox community, but not limited, please feel free to speak about the greater community.

What would you like to see as a consequence of this quarantine experience? What would be the everlasting takeaway in how we act as individuals, as families, as communities, when we come out of this? How do you see the Jewish community in the post-COVID-19 world? How will the Jewish community operate differently in your ideal world? How should it operate differently? And how should our relationship to God, our avodat Hashem, be different in terms of how we relate to our spouse, our parents, our children, how we relate to the community, the shul, the day schools, but how we relate to humanity in general? Please, Rabbi Sacks. 

Rabbi Sacks: Yes, let me begin where Rabbi Goldberg left off in his beautiful words. The key question, as Rav Hirsch said, and as Rav Soloveitchik said, is not to ask why has this happened? But to ask what then shall I do? And that is the key question that we have to ask right now.

There's a personal level, a Jewish level, and a global level. The personal level - and it's a tough one - is that I think, just speaking personally, my biggest question that I have to answer while this is happening is, “Ribbono shel Olam, what do you need me to do that I have not yet done?”

 It's a very simple but a very deep question for each of us, and if we're blessed, we get an answer, and that gives us direction for the future. As far as the Orthodox community is concerned, Rabbi Goldberg has already hinted.

Number one, first and foremost, every single Orthodox community, I think every single Jewish community, has now, or as soon as it can, to reach out to the lonely, the elderly, the incapacitated. They are the ones who have suffered most. Every shul should put together, if it hasn't already got one, a welfare committee of volunteers that will invite such people as soon as it's safe to do so, that will visit them, that will phone them weekly or even daily. Is there anything you need? 

They will have missed out on Pesach, they will have missed out Shabbat after Shabbat. Chesed, in the biblical sense, is about the widow, the orphan, the stranger, the people at the margins of our community, and this is a wake-up call. Have we ignored a single lonely person in our community? Well, we shouldn't do so from here onward.

Number two, it's a very practical task. A shul should put together a team of business people - successful ones, retired ones, to help what the Rambam defines as the highest level of tzedakah, which is help people who may have lost their jobs or whose businesses may have failed - give them advice, maybe financial support, because there are real, real economic problems that are going to arise that have already arisen and somebody else's gashmiut is my ruchniut. A shul should be helping at an economic level.

And finally, at the spiritual level, we have to think, why did Hashem ask Avraham to undergo the Akeidah, to almost lose his child? Why did Hashem know that our people would have to go to Egypt and lose their freedom? Because I think the things that we have almost or nearly or briefly lost are the things we take care never to lose again. And so Jews became the most child-centred people in history and the most liberty-loving people in history because we almost lost our first child and we almost lost, or we did lose for a while, our liberty. We have lost a great deal.

We've lost face-to-face contact, chevruta, kehilla, tefillah b'tzibbur, we've lost simcha b'rabbim, nichum aveilim, we've lost hachnasat orchim. All of these things we should look at with a renewed sense of spiritual appreciation because I think those things are terribly important. Those are the things that should be done right as soon as possible within every Orthodox community.

Finally, how does this affect humanity? It's the first time ever that all humanity has been faced with the same problem at the same time and forced into the same political and economic and hygienic measures. It has emphasised the Brit Bnei Noach, what I call the covenant of human solidarity. That's number one. We should begin to realise that chaviv adam she’nivra be’tzelem, there's something that unites us all as humanity. 

Number two, we have seen one tiny little microscopic thing, this virus, bring all of humanity to its knees despite all our affluence and technological prowess and scientific knowledge. This should create a new covenant of human vulnerability, which should enhance our efforts - which have been too little too late - to guard against future dangers to humanity of which climate change is clearly one, the most important one, but a cyber attack may be another and yet another pandemic may be yet another.

We have to realise our vulnerability and hence develop humility and hence make the world safe for our grandchildren and not simply focus on now. 

And number three, I think we have all seen that along with some very selfish and irresponsible behaviour on the part of some, there has been incredible heroic selfless behaviour on the part of others. There really is a dimension of ‘We,’ of acting for the common good, which has made all the difference without which we would not have survived this.

So yes, there is the ‘I’ of competition for wealth in the market and for power in the state, but there is also the ‘We’ of chesed, of tzedek, of all the values that the Nevi'im spoke of and I hope that having had a relentless generation ‘me’ and a consumerist society and an economic driven vision of what we're about, we realise that there are other and more important things in life and reaching out to help one another is one of those. 

Rabbi Weil: Thank you very much. Rabbi Goldberg.

Rabbi Goldberg: Rabbi Sacks has so brilliantly written about the butterfly effect, applying it to the butterfly effect of kindness, and one of the things that strikes me is that an invisible virus in an isolated area of the world has been able to absolutely turn the entire world, the whole globe, literally upside down. And if that's the truth for something so negative, then it can be true for something positive, and if we all see that and take that responsibility, which one of us will flap our wings in a way that can create a tsunami of kindness and change around the globe as much as this has stopped the globe from spinning on its axis in the negative way that it has. 

I saw an interview with Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, and he said, you know, I think in 10 or 20 years from now, he posited, we will look back and see that the most innovative changes, the companies that were born that had the biggest difference, came as a result of this crisis right now. And he pointed to history, which I'm not in a position to do, that some of the greatest innovation entrepreneurship breakthroughs happened after a time of retraction, crisis, tragedy and loss. And while that might be true on an economic standpoint, from a financial or company standpoint, I think it can also be true from a spiritual standpoint, if we do this the right way. 

What do I mean by that? Well, let me first tell you what I'm afraid of.

These are the fears that for the last several weeks, the last month throughout Pesach have gripped me. The concern that people have experienced things in a way that they might be satisfied with, though they are not really, they're not authentic. So, for example, I'm worried, in the future, will people say, I don't have to see the rabbi to sell the chametz. If I could do it online that year, I can do it online every year. 

Or how many people come to shul just for Yizkor? Unaffiliated Jews, affiliated Jews, they don't make their way to shul as often as they should, but what will stop in the future, they're saying, you know, for those who can't make it, let's do at the end of Chol HaMoed a Zoom Yizkor service and then will we lose out on those who that was their contact with shul? Will people say, well, why get dressed and fight for parking, I don't have to go to Rabbi Sacks' class in person. Let's broadcast and stream all classes from now on going forward.

Rabbis, teachers will teach to empty rooms and everybody will be watching from the comfort of their own home. These are just a few examples, but they concern me with what did people experience during this crisis that I'm afraid they'll want to take forward with them and I hope we won't. 

On the other hand, on the other hand, I think there are things we've been deprived of that will give us a renewed sense of appreciation for, maybe in a way that is unprecedented, that we haven't had until now.

And let me explain to you what I mean. A few years ago, I wrote an article actually in the OU’s Jewish Action, “Challenging Millennials,” after a conversation wondering why millennials don't come to Yom HaShoah programs. We have heroic survivors, they are literally paradigms of faith and courage, the likes of which I don't know has ever existed or will again.

And we're running out of the opportunity to interact and I challenged, where are the millennials? And their answer was, we've experienced Yom HaShoah and so many other dates on the calendar online. I post a sad story, I read, I retweet, I watch a video, and they don't necessarily show up in person. And I had a healthy exchange about it.

I learned a lot from it. But one of my takeaways in this article that I challenged was, there's an element and a notion called community that transcends the individual, that transcends the experience. It cannot be online.

It's something that can only be experienced in person. Shlomo HaMelech taught us, “kemayim lemayim hapanim lapanim,” the notion that we see one another, the reflection of one another's eye, one another's face. 

There's a MIT professor, psychologist, Sherry Turkle, who wrote a book called “Alone Together,” Why we Expect more from Technology and less from Each Other. Alone Together. And it's an amazing thing. The more you're connected online, the lonelier you are when you come offline.

And this past month has been a real experiment in exactly this type of a Jewish society. We have our classes. Some are even streaming a Kabbalat Shabbat, or dabbling at the same time, albeit it's not a minyan, you can't say devarim she’bikdusha.

We've been able to recreate and reproduce a lot of Jewish life. But here's the thing we couldn't reproduce. Community, human contact, face-to-face, heart-to-heart.

We have deprived aveilim of the ability to say Kaddish for their loved ones, only when we are a community. And even if our davening is better when we are by ourselves, we owe it to mourners to create community, so they can properly grieve, and they can properly mourn their loved ones. And there are countless more examples of it.

So my hope is that we come out from this realising a few things. The role, first of all, of our homes. The Gemara and the Midrash tell us that Avraham called the Temple Mount a “har,” a mountain, one ascends, you climb to that place of spirituality.

Yitzchak called it a “sadeh,” a field. He had a conversation with Hashem, he spoke to this. But Yaakov, who Chazal say had the most accurate description, called it a “bayit,” beit Elokim, because what we've all done is we've created many synagogues and many Batei Midrash and many chesed factories within our home, and I hope that stays. I hope we can preserve that. I hope we can expand upon that. I hope we're not always looking for the solution outside our home. We're not running for companionship outside our home, entertainment outside our home.

We're not always inundated with guests, but we've experienced what it means to be a family, a nuclear, a core family, and what it means to transform our homes into those holy places. But I also hope it will renew our sense of love for community. That maybe the house minyan on my block is more convenient, but this has taught me that I need to show up at the shul because community transcends convenience and comfort.

I hope this shows me my effort to pay a shiva call in person, even if I don't know the person so well, the deceased, because what it means to be a community in good times and in bad times, that community is something so much greater. “Al tifrosh min ha’tzibbur,” and “Berov am hadrat Melech.”

The thing that we've all been deprived, we have classes, we have forms of davening, and we have forms of this, and Pesach, we had all of our foods, but we've been deprived community. Obviously, as rabbis, maybe we feel that more poignantly, more acutely, but I hope that we all feel that, and that drives us to feel it, and to contribute, and to support it, and to expand it, and to make it bigger and stronger than ever going forward.

Rabbi Weil: Rabbi Sacks, Rabbi Goldberg, on behalf of the OU family and the OU community, we want to thank you really from the bottoms of our hearts for opening your personal stories and your personal perspective, and also for taking a step back and looking at this on a global level, and giving us the guidance, and giving us food for thought as we move forward with our lives. As we, so to speak, we take the lemons, and we try to turn it into lemonade. 

We want to move forward as better Jews, better human beings, better members of God's society, in God's community, and on behalf of all of us, you're both very busy, and you both have many, many responsibilities. Thank you for giving us of your heart, your thoughts, and your time, to both of you. And I want to turn it at this point over to Naftali Harmon, and I want to thank Naftali and the great people at OU Synagogue Services and OU Community Engagement, who literally have been giving us these kind of quality programs day in, day out, throughout the quarantine, and throughout coronavirus. Naftali. 

Naftali: Thank you very much, Rabbi Weil, and thank you so much to our unbelievable panel for an incredibly informative, enlightening, and fascinating conversation. I hope that all of you enjoyed it as much as I did.

Thank yous and closing announcements.