By David E. Kaplan

Little did we think when we watched a year ago the final season of ‘Game of Thrones’ and joked that “Winter is Coming” that the show’s most memorable marketing metaphor of impending doom descending on the landscape would step out of our TVs into our very lives.

Corona affected everyone everywhere. And like in the award-winning mythical saga of demons, dragons and the demented, in our wonky world of 2020, people perished, much of our commerce suspended or died, and a powerful leader of the most powerful nation on earth – confounded by the science, fell – to the dismay of his mega-million followers.

“Winter” came with a vengeance and we wonder if our lives will ever be the same again.

No doubt when folk turn on their TVs to watch the countdown to midnight on the 31^st December and observe the fireworks first in Sydney; and then illuminate across cities circumnavigating the globe, they will be praying for some semblance of “life as we knew it.”

Diminished social intimacy and wearing masks for fear of ‘the next virus’ is not something we want in our proverbial luggage as we travel into the future!

Still, we do have to marvel.

With all the pain and discomfort,  we have to tip our hats to those brave souls who day in and day out returned to the terrifying trenches, helping the inflicted and preventing those from being inflicted at great risk to themselves and their families.

The death toll from Covid-19 has surpassed the number of Americans killed in World War I and the Vietnam War combined. And this December 2020, the number of daily Covid-19 deaths in the US now surpasses the number of people who died on 9/11.  How sadly ironic that so many of the first responders in 9/11 are falling victim to Covid-19!

First, it was the horror of that tragic day as first responders ran into the fire as debris rained down. Then followed months of grueling work to remove the bodies and clear the pile as toxic dust inevitably filled their lungs. Then came the illnesses – asthma, cancers and COPD.

And in 2020, nearly two decades later, the coronavirus pandemic – which, in so many cases, feeds off the underlying conditions like the ones 9/11 survivors developed – has finally taken their toll and in many cases, their lives. For those with already weakened lungs and immune systems, this latest challenge has been too great to endure. Beset by Corona, the list of 9/11 victims continues to grow.

And as with the 9/11 first responders, so too have been the healthcare workers on the front lines of the global effort to care for patients with COVID-19 putting themselves at risk for infection. Thousands from a multitude of countries, professions, and specialties have died, and we honour them all.

See the Light

As in the story of Hanukkah, which Jews around the world are presently celebrating where we are reminded of miracles   – a small quantity of oil to light the Temple’s menorah miraculously lasted eight days – even today’s cynics and skeptics have to marvel as to how humanity has miraculously responded to this pandemic with rapid resourcefulness.

Questions were raised as to how we might achieve the impossible.

It was said that “it usually takes 10 years to develop a vaccine”.

I recall endless opinions and comments in the news media along the lines of from “The grim truth is that a vaccine probably won’t arrive any time soon”  to  “Our record for developing an entirely new vaccine is at least four years — more time than the public or the economy can tolerate social-distancing orders”.

And yet, as we in Israel saw Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Health Minister Yuli Edelstein attend the arrival of a DHL freight plane transporting the first batch of Pfizer vaccines at Ben Gurion Airport on December 9, 2020, we had to marvel how this vaccine has gone from the drawing board to imminent distribution in such a short period of time.

No, it did not take years but months as people in Israel will start receiving their doses from the 27^th December, four days before New Year 2020. Coronavirus czar, Nachman Ash, said he hopes Israelis will be able to celebrate Passover 2021 in an almost restriction-free manner.

“I assume that in March-April we’ll already return to significant activity. My hope is that we can celebrate Passover in an almost free manner.”

How we in Israel recall that it was during Passover 2020 – falling during the initial outbreak of the pandemic – that the government ordered an overnight curfew, confining Israelis to their homes for the first night of the holiday.

A festivity all about celebrating FREEDOM, Passover 2021 may be the momentous milestone when we all return to FREEDOM.

Now that’s something to cheer about –  “L’chaim!”  (Hebrew “to life”) 

*Feature pictute credit: Illustration by Joseph McDermott


While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (O&EO).

Tel Aviv to open classrooms in city’s leading public institutions

By David E. Kaplan

Parents in Israel are in Corona virus panic mode with their kids returning to shool on the 1 September.

“Are the schools ready?” “Does the government know what it’s doing?” “Will schools close again?”

There are far more sensible questions than credible answers and being a Jewish state, grandparents feel obliged to share in the panic. After all, when the domestic alarm bells sounds, Saba and Safta (grandfather and grandmother) are the ‘First Responders’!

However, Israel’s “City of big ideas”, Tel Aviv-Yafo, has come up with some innovative ideas on meeting this challenge. Mayor, Ron Huldai, says “We have prepared for every scenario that we are expected to confront.”

What this means is that while it may be back to school, it might not be exactly the same school or the school as it once was.

What does this mean?

New and intriguing surroundings will welcome the schoolchildren, after the city’s education system adopted a series of creative solutions to enable in-class learning. To this end, the Tel Aviv-Yafo municipality has prepared for the return of almost 75,000 pupils to schools amid strict Health Ministry COVID-19 guidelines, including the opening of classrooms in a range of public buildings and spaces across the city.

It is a case of “and now for something completely different!”

To enable classes to be split into smaller “capsules for safer and socially distanced learning”, additional spaces have been secured at sites including Tel Aviv’s Cameri Theater, the Charles Bronfman Auditorium (Heichal HaTarbut), the Israel Music Conservatory and Tel Aviv University. One ‘sure thing’ during these “unsure times” is the certainty of no rain. So, taking advantage of Israel’s guaranteed sunshine this time of year, classes will also be taught in parks and other green spaces located adjacent to schools.

Work of Art

Smaller classes means requiring more teachers, so the Municipality came up the idea of utilising local artists and performers who have been impacted by the coronavirus to provide the additional teaching staff for the supplementary classes. Not sitting idle in the sweltering summer vacations, they have been undergoing training as educational support workers and are ready for the big day.

Sounding like gearing up for a Normandy landing, Ron Huldai, Mayor of Tel Aviv-Yafo said in a press release:

 “The coronavirus outbreak hurled the entire world into a new reality and presented us with a challenge of an unprecedented nature. Given the experience of recent months, we have made special preparations for the opening of the new school year.

The schools of September 2020 will be unlike the schools that we have known to date. The coming year will bring new challenges, but there are also opportunities: to implement upgrades; to accelerate pedagogical and structural processes for which the time is now ripe; and to reexamine our educational premises. We have prepared for every scenario that we are expected to confront this year in the shadow of the coronavirus, and we are all hopeful that this year will advance us to unprecedented and different levels of ability.”

Inspiring stuff!!

Such inspirational rhetoric during a global war against a disease, gives credence to the rumours that Tel Aviv Mayor, Ron Huldai, is mulling a run for Prime Minister. In a July 19 article in The Jerusalem Post, it was  reported that he was facing increasing calls to enter national politics after 22 years as the Mayor of Tel Aviv and earlier careers as an IAF combat pilot and high school principal.

 As a former “high school principal”, Mayor Huldai understands education at a grassroots level, which has helped him respond to the current pandemic crisis.

Out in the Open

In addition to opening classrooms in public buildings  and institutions – all impressive landmark structures on the Tel Aviv landscape – infrastructure work has been carried out in 137 schoolyards across the city to enable or enhance outdoor learning, including greater provision of shade and artificial grass.

Tel Aviv has proved from its inception in 1909 to be a city that adjusts to change. Understanding that students returning to school might not be quite the same they were before the pandemic,  has led to finding new methodologies to navigate the uncertain road ahead.

According to the press release, “All educational institutions in the city will dedicate the first days of the school year to personal and group conversations with pupils, placing an emphasis on enhancing their emotional and social skills.”

Explains Shirley Rimon-Bracha, Head of Tel Aviv-Yafo’s Education Administration:

“The past six months have presented educational teams in kindergartens and schools with management and educational challenges. We have translated all the lessons learnt and insights into optimal preparations for September.

Education in the city has undergone significant reform in recent years, and school principals are therefore relatively prepared to acclimatize to change, to adjust educational frameworks and to work with flexibility and creatively. I expect an interesting and educational year for us all, and I pay tribute to school and kindergarten heads for their exceptional effort to open the new school year.”

Warm Welcome

In addition to using public spaces, pupils arriving at over 70 elementary and middle schools on September 1, will be greeted by approximately 200 street performers at the school gates and adjacent public spaces.

The performances will fulfil two key municipal objectives: boosting the income of street performers and raising the morale of schoolchildren as they start an unfamiliar academic year.

That does not mean parents will still not worry.

Its embedded in Jewish DNA. As one writer once noted:

 “Forget Murphy’s Law. Chances are his real name was Murphosky and his family taught him: “If anything can go wrong, it will.”

On the other hand it might not – Tel Aviv is ready.

While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs

Coping With Corona

By David E. Kaplan

Travelling anywhere?

Yes, too frequently! To the kitchen and sometimes a pitstop at the bar cabinet!

And for those in for a little more adventure, I hear:

“We, wife and I, are going away for the weekend; we just haven’t decided which room to move to!”

This is the “new normal” or as one headline so poignantly warned, “If your weekend felt normal, you are endangering us all.”

‘Social distancing’ and ‘washing your hands’ we are told is our “only hope”. With Corona accelerating, we have little protection other than our behaviour, which requires us to keep apart.

While people are unable to control events, they can control how they cope with them.

This is literally in their hands – both figuratively and literally.

With the entire Israeli  public under strict lockdown, Lay Of The Land was  intrigued how this boisterous and socially gregarious public was handling being cooped up in their homes.

“You have to keep going and keep busy,” advocates Pauline Borsuk, a senior citizen resident at the South African retirement home Beth Protea in Herzliya, Israel. “I keep engaged by phoning my brothers on WhatsApp in the States – Boston, Houston and Washington and my kids and grandkids in Israel.  Then I go to pottery, walk and sit in the public areas of Beth Protea – keeping our two-metre distance of course, and have my hair done once a week. We can’t leave the place; we can’t receive visitors and we no longer have meals together in the dining room.”

So how is that managed?

“All the meals are now wonderfully packed and brought to our rooms. So we adjust; we manage. I was a professional social worker, so I understand what is required to cope. You have to keep going and do the best under these trying conditions. This is the way I think. I had a mother like that and a grandmother like that – it’s in my genes.”

And finally Pauline adds “don’t lose your sense of humour.”

Jokes Aside

So true as shown by the amount of time people globally are investing in the dissemination of humour through social media. A sense of humour is proving a strong line of defense in coping with stress.

A key element of jokes shared, mostly on WhatsApp is that they comically force you to look at the same situation in different ways.

With frequent references by politicians saying, “we are at war” and “fighting an invisible enemy”,  I loved this one below comparing our efforts in this “war” to the “Greatest Generation” of WWII:

As far as keeping busy at home, people are proving imaginative and industrious, I called my Lay of the Land colleague, Rolene Marks to get her take what she is “up to” when she is not writing or broadcasting live and she did not allow me to even finish the question:

“Call back in an hour. I’m just about to start my on-line gym class on Zoom!”

 This I was familiar with. My daughter Keren, a dance instructor is running  five classes for her students on-line using Zoom and hopes to raise it to twelve classes.  She has converted an upstairs spare room into a solo dance studio, “and it’s working well,” she says descending the stairway with a heavy sweat after an early evening class. “Great way to keep fit and keep up our spirits” she says.  Without having to leave their parent’s homes, her students range in age from nine to eighteen years. It does come with some dangers. With a slanted roof in one section of her loft ‘studio’, a bump on the forehead was noticeable after one energised modern jazz session!

To see Keren perform with friend Lee in the local Hod Hasharon Park before it was closed to visitors due to Coronavirus:

Inspired by my daughter’s example, I have converted our lounge into a gym and removed an unpacked GymTrim exercise machine which I had brought from South Africa when I came on Aliyah in 1987.  That’s a long time ago. Many times I considered getting rid of it. Which only gives credence to the adage – “Don’t throw away today what you might need tomorrow.”  In this case, that tomorrow took over three decades to arrive – thanks to Coronavirus!

Reflecting on my native South Africa whose population only this week has been  locked into their homes for a period of at least 21 days, the writer, Richard Poplak in his ‘Locked & Loaded – South Africa enters the Age of Corona’ notes that “home” is “a mutable term where some will sequester themselves in palaces, others in shacks. These inequities – long nurtured and time-tested – are the conditions in which any virus thrives. Can we beat Covid-19 when we haven’t figured out how to live without a plague.”

Over 700 cases in South Africa have so far been diagnosed and the future is uncertain.

My next call was to Manof,  a community settlement established by South Africans in 1980 in northern Israel. Located on Mount Shekhanya in the Lower Galilee, about 30 km northeast of Haifa, Manof has a population of 862.

Only a few days earlier, some 197 of its residents came out of a 14-day period of quarantine after having attended a party celebrating the Jewish festivity of Purim where also attending had been a visitor from abroad later diagnosed as having Coronavirus. .

Fortunate in not having attended the party, Irit Kaplan escaped the quarantine.  A psychotherapist, with a clinic near Nahariya, a coastal town in the north and nearly an hour’s drive away from Manof, the writer was interested to know how she kept her practice going.

“On the phone and on-line, I am at least managing to maintain about 70% of my work and that includes supervising my fellow professionals.”

And how has Corona affected her clients?

“A spectrum of reactions, all depending on the circumstances of the individual from a divorcee feeling more alone now than before to others anxious over their economic future. Also, with the children all confined in limited space, homes become pressure cookers.”

However, it was pleasing to hear from Irit that she had not “yet” encountered “any major fears, depression, acute anxiety or panic attacks as a direct consequence of the Coronavirus.”

An hour later, I called back Rolene calculating she must have finished her online Zoom gym session. She had, but she  was about to start her online live ballet class. “It’s the only way to get through this Corona. One has to continue doing things that feel normal and structure your day meaningfully.” As an example, she cites her husband, who is in hi-tech and now working from home, “gets up in the morning the usual time, dresses the same way as if he was going to work, and ‘travels’ to the dining room where he has set up his office, sits in front of his computer and does a full day’s work.”

As for Rolene, “there are five of us in our gym class; we have a WhatsApp group, and we synchronize when to hold our classes. My ballet is with another group and if its Sunday, its Pilates.”

So Corona or no Corona, “we pursue our  lives within the limitations imposed on us.”

Collective Comfort

Away from the cities and towns, Israel’s rural population living in its collective settlements are fortunate to have social infrastructures to cope with Corona.

“I think what is quite unique  about Israel,” says Irit, “are our support systems across the country on our kibbutzim, moshavim and yishuvim. Already in place, these structures of support equipped communities to absorb the unforeseen Corona.” She explains that on Manof, “We have a committee for our seniors who are constantly phoned to see how they are doing and if they require anything from food to medicine. We have organised for provisions from our local store to be delivered to households by the youth of the moshav, who are all volunteers. On our internet network, people advise when going to the supermarket or pharmacy and offer to get for those who need anything. We also have a women’s WhatsApp group called “Who’s Got A Cup Of Sugar”. We are 135 in the group and help each in need. On an ordinary day, it might be “I have run out of baking powder, ginger or garlic, these days it is more in tune with the needs of coping under Corona and that includes, sharing jokes. Above all, we need to keep our spirits up.”

Israelis are used to keeping their spirits up as well as  accustomed to staying at home and obsessively tuning into the news. Wars and constant terror have prepared and hardened this population.

This however is different.

How we should have listened to Bill Gates when he addressed the 2015 Ted Talks when he warned :

“If anything kills over 10 million people in the next few decades, it’s most likely to be a highly infectious virus rather than a war. Not missiles, but microbes.”

These days, it’s not to bomb shelters, sealed rooms or the stairwell Israelis scurry, sometimes in their pajamas. With Corona we have the luxury of staying put on our sofas.

As Dana Kesler noted with wry humour writing in the Tablet that when this is all over, Israel can expect “a post-coronavirus baby-boom plus a long line at the rabbinical courts to get a divorce.”

A baby-boom is good; in the meantime let’s get over the virus!