“The Goldberg Variations”
That’s what Nisa, my amazing sister-in-law said has been helping her through the past, difficult several months.
It wasn’t a random comment. Every Passover, over dinner, we go around the table (or the screen) and give each person an opportunity to talk about freedom and/or their narrow place, if they choose. Nisa explained that she’s been regularly listening to Bach’s Goldberg Variation ever since she read that the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg loved and listened regularly to them. This resonated with me because I regularly listened to the same music in the months after my father died in 2001, particularly when I would take morning walks while visiting my mother in North Carolina.
Not surprisingly, this year, an extraordinary discussion about freedom objects and narrow places turned was very much a conversation about how each of us has cared, or tried to care, for ourselves-and for others– in the 11-plus months since many of the same people had gathered on Zoom to celebrate Passover in 2020.
For the most part, we are a lucky group. Most of us have not gotten sick; most of us still have jobs and housing; and a community. But we have suffered, nonetheless. Several friends lost parents (not to COVID); some have lost income; and almost everyone has struggled with isolation, fear, and frustration. And people spoke about many ways they have found their way, which included taking online dance classes, working out anger an exercise bikes, gardening, bicycle riding, celebrating Joe Biden’s victory and early initiatives, working to overcome old traumas, walking dogs, bringing new dogs into their lives, exploring Little Tiny Libraries,’ writing about old stamps, and much, much more.
A doctor who usually is part of Seders wasn’t with us because he was on call. But reflecting on the ways we’ve cared for each other reminded me of the extraordinary ways that medical professionals – not just doctors, but also nurses, orderlies, hospital workers and many others – stepped up at the beginning of the pandemic and have continued to step up ever since. In my own miniscule way, I honor those frontline workers with today’s #stampoftheday. A 2-cent stamp issued in 1940 as part of the 35-stamp “Famous Americans” series, it pictures Dr. Crawford W. Long, who on March 30, 1842, was the first to use ether as an anesthetic during surgery, which he did in rural Georgia.
Like me, you may be confused because, like me, you might have learned that procedure was first done at Massachusetts General Hospital not in rural Georgia. But it turns out that procedure, which was done in Boston by William Morgan in 1846, was the first to be published in a major medical journal. For the next several decades, Long, who did the same procedure four years earlier, fought for formal credit, which didn’t come until 1879, a year after he died.
Apparently to honor Long, in 1933 resident of Winder, Georgia (which is about 25 miles from Athens, where Long lived), celebrated the first Doctors’ Day. People mailed cards to doctors and their wives; they also placed flowers on the graves of deceased doctors, including Dr. Long. Doctors’ Day spread in popularity throughout the South and eventually the country, and, apparently, was made a national holiday in 1990.
I didn’t hear anything about Doctor’s Day 2021, which is a shame (either that or I’m even more out of touch than I realized). I recall that at the start of the pandemic, there was an enormous outpouring of appreciation and support for medical workers and others on the front lines of our efforts to cope with the pandemic’s devastation and the fear it left in its wake.
The nightly cheers for shift changes have waned but our appreciation should not. So today, on Doctor’s Day (which really should be called Medical Professionals Day), I offer up a prayer that many Jewish congregations, including mine, began offering during in Friday night services. The prayer was inserted just after Hashkiveinu, a beautiful evening prayer that includes the phrase “Ufros Aleinu Sukkat Shlomecha”– a request, perhaps even a plea, for divine protection, literally a shelter of peace or blanket of protection, not only for us but everyone.
The new prayer asks for divine blessing for all the people who have “put themselves at risk to care for the sick” and who “navigate the unfolding dangers of the world each day, to tend to those they have sworn to help.”
It continues:
“Bless them in their coming home and bless them in their going out.
Ease their fear. Sustain them.
…Protect them and restore their hope.
Strengthen them, that they may bring strength;
Keep them in health, that they may bring healing.
Help them know again a time when they can breathe without fear.
Bless the sacred work of their hands.
May this plague pass from among us, speedily and in our days.”
Amen.
Be well, stay safe, listen to music that’s good for the soul, look forward to a time when you “can breathe without fear,” fight for justice, and work for peace.