New York, NY
I’m going to talk about how my community and I have been affected by the government response to COVID-19, and the community I'm going to talk about is my religious community. I think most of you know that I'm in a chorus. It's a Jewish chorus in Westchester and I've been singing with this group for probably four or five years and while it's secular we do sing both religious music and secular music. And it's a real opportunity to connect with a community of other singers and mostly other Jews – they’re not all Jewish, but also at concert time to bring together family. And my rabbi found out that I was singing with this chorus about three years ago, before the Jewish high holidays that year. She said she wanted to connect me with the cantor at our synagogue and asked if we would sing a duet, which totally freaked me out because usually I do not sing solo type stuff. I love the choral environment. But, I agreed, we rehearsed, we sang together, my parents came – my parents are in their 80s. They cried. It was amazing and it brought everybody together, and my temple community was also quite moved and appreciative. And a tradition started. I sang again with the same cantor the next year again, deeply appreciative, and then we came to the COVID year. That was the third year and we couldn't do services together. We weren't in person, couldn't rehearse together – you can't sing together on Zoom, there's a time lapse, so, as we all know, it doesn't work. We actually did go to the temple for a recording before the high holidays – they hired somebody to record and we each sang our parts separately. And then, the video person mixed our parts and they played the recording during remote high holiday services. We couldn't be together in a place. Together, praying, singing, and being joyous. My parents couldn't come. It’s just such a year of disconnect and the government has, for reasons we all understand, forced us to be separate. It's so isolating and I've found that there's just so much joy lacking. I can’t connect with my family and religious community, which I think people across all religions are probably feeling at this time. So, it's been bittersweet.
