COVID-19 "side-effects". A difficult new challenge.

“When I am nervous, I say--I am Jewish.” I have joked with one of my best friends that if I ever wrote a book that would be the title. This is my space filler. My statement I blurt out to fill the silence in between stories when the pause gets too long. It is something I am proud of, I relate to and I guess I just want people to know.

This week something happened. I was attending a virtual public meeting. Someone “zoombombed” the Q&A section: “I hate Jewish people” popped up. I lost my breath. My air was sucked out of me. The words lingered on the computer screen. Those four words sat there staring me in the face. Taunting me. What does it feel like to be on the other side of hate? Horrible. Sickening. Deflating.

I am Jewish. I will say it again. Clearly this is not a secret. I announce it at random moments. I proudly display a Hebrew Camp sticker on my car. I celebrate the high holidays. I post pictures on my Facebook page of our family’s traditions.

Was I targeted in this call? Who knows? The reason for the statement is irrelevant. What matters is that it was written. Right there for us all to see. Turns out this was not an isolated incidence, this “zoombombing” is a recurrent issue. https://www.adl.org/blog/what-is-zoombombing-and-who-is-behind-it

Should I write this article? Nope, NOT at all in my lane. Stay in your lane, Melissa, I ruminated. What could I gain from posting about this? Awareness, I answer to my self-proposed question. We can gain mindfulness. So here it goes.

Currently, I am reading Love, Medicine and Miracles by Doctor Bernie Siegel. It is an amazing first-hand account about how love heals. This book speaks specifically to the journey of exceptional cancer patients who have been able to add more quality time to their lives by opening their hearts, minds, and souls to gratitude. As I have been reading, I cannot help but compare our current pandemic fundamentally to an emblematic ‘global cancer’. As I have read, I have highlighted sections that seem relevant to our current battles, and one concept jumped off the page at me. Side-effects; not the medical ones but the spiritual ones. The good ones. What patients describe as ultimate benefits to living with or out-living cancer. They report the diagnosis caused them to appreciate all “the little things”. Consequently, research has shown a longer, more emotionally productive lifespan.

Why am I talking about this? This article is about anti-Semitism and hate. It’s not, really; it is about love. During this time when an insidious virus has, like a cancer, shut down everything we have come to know as normal, we have a few paths to choose. In other words, our side-effects. A more emotionally productive path or a hateful one. Coming on to a public meeting to spew hate is the opposite of love. And I chose not to let that in. I chose healing. I chose gratitude.

By the way, I am Jewish, and I am proud.

*I am a Medfield Board of Health Member, a bedside nurse at The Brigham and Woman’s Hospital, and a Medfield “townie”. This article is my opinion and not that of the BOH or the BWH*