A Holy Resetting

COVID-19 Is like an X-ray of Society
The disease’s unequal impacts on different segments of the population are illuminating long-standing structural injustices
By Leah T. Rosen on May 14, 2020
In many ways, coronavirus has functioned like an x-ray. With the flip of a switch, it has stripped us of our skin and revealed our internal state, which was once so deliberately hidden, so to avoid the gaze and judgment of the outside world. We are left exposed, vulnerable, illuminated.
In this state, we are confronted with a new awareness: our world as we choose to perceive it does not necessarily match the truth of how it functions. The racism that so many people believe to have been buried in our history long ago now clearly presents itself in the racial demographic data—or lack thereof—for COVID-19. The classism that has divided our society into the haves and have-nots is now revealed with deadly implications, as access to testing or treatment depends on one’s connections and ability to pay, respectively. Numerous other forms of inequality and injustice are becoming apparent, as I will argue throughout this piece—each of which provides further evidence to the point that coronavirus is an x-ray that has quite tragically revealed just how broken our bones are.

Mutual obligations in exceptional circumstances—and beyond
April 30, 2020
Maurizio Albahari

The big reveal of the COVID-19 pandemic is that “no one can save themselves alone,” as Pope Francis wrote in his Easter Sunday letter. No human is capable of flourishing in individualized isolation, outside dignified relations of recognition and trust. Humans are independent and interdependent. We are not meant to live, die, and mourn alone.
Formidable viral contagiousness lacerates face-to-face proximity and intergenerational relations. We comply with self-administered or mandated physical isolation. Nevertheless, able-bodied or not, we are hardly self-sufficient—think of food and water, sanitation, deliveries, utilities, and entertainment; public safety, manufacturing, and scientific research.
Migrants and the common good
When disaster strikes, it becomes apparent that individual and corporate responsibility, social solidarity, and public administration of services are essential to personal dignity and to the common good. On these foundations, polities may discern emerging ethics of connection and exchange. Discussions centered on international migrants, whose inclusion in the common good is often conditional and precarious, are integral to such an emerging ethics.
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In the United States, dairy and produce farmers are providing their undocumented workers with letters certifying the essential nature of their tasks, should local law enforcement need to verify compliance with lockdown norms. Such workers face occupational risks, often compounded by lack of health insurance, sick pay, COVID-19 relief provisions, and by the multigenerational wounds inflicted by formidably virulent, racializing stigma.
Every day, these essential workers face the angst of their legal and existential limbo. Today, inarguably “relevant,” they are reluctantly accepted as essential links in supply chains. Tomorrow, when they are no longer so glaringly “essential,” they might become no more than the object of nativist antagonism. Will they be facing deportation, once the ongoing crisis subsides?
Such questions should help us ponder the ethical limitations of arguments that tie migration (including refugee migration) exclusively to how many “crop hands,” doctors, nurses, younger taxpayers, and supermarket-shelf stackers “we” might need at this or that socio-demographic and macroeconomic juncture. Gloves and surgical masks are desperately needed, but these items are also replaceable, and ultimately disposable. Workers may be hired and laid off. Migrants may be deported. But persons are never redundant.

R' Shawn Israel Zevit, The Offerings of the Heart, 12.
The Divine ownership of wealth is central to the principles of traditional Jewish economic philosophy at the personal, communal, national, and universal levels. First fruits are given to the Temple, thanking God for bountiful produce. The land is in the hands of the Divine and must rest every seven years and lie fallow. Our entire material world is on loan, and all goods must be returned to their original owners every fiftieth year for the Jubilee. Material and spiritual freedom are intimately linked, and the basis of all is not financial equity, but the pursuit of justice.

Vayikra Rabbah 1:1
“The mighty in strength that fulfill God's word” (Psalms 103:20). To whom does
the Scripture refer? R. Isaac said, “To those who are willing to observe the
Sabbatical Year. In the way of the world, a person may be willing to observe a
commandment for a day, a week, a month, but are they likely to continue to do so
through the remaining days of the year? But throughout that year this mighty
person sees their field declared ownerless, their fences broken down, and their produce consumed by others, yet they continue to give up their produce without saying a word. Can you conceive a person mightier than them?”

Kli Yakar on Devarim 31:12
The year of Shmita...promotes a sense of fellowship and peace through the suspension of cultivation, even for the needy of your people, for one is not allowed to exercise private ownership over any of the seventh year produce. And this is undoubtedly a primary factor in promoting peace since most dissension originates from the attitudes of 'mine is mine,' one person claiming 'it is all mine' and the other also claiming 'it is all mine.' But in the seventh year all are equal, and this is the real essence of peace.

Rabbi Zvi Hirscher, Sefer Habrit, Parshat Behar
[The Shmita year] teaches us further that the rich should not lord it over the poor. Accordingly, the Torah ordained that all should be equal during the seventh year, both the rich and the needy having access to the gardens and fields to eat their fill...Yet another reason: in order that they should not always be preoccupied with working the soil to provide for their material needs. for in this one year, they would be completely free. The liberation from the yoke of work would give them the opportunity for studying Torah and wisdom. The unlettered (illiterate) will be occupied with crafts and building and supplying these needs in Eretz Yisrael. Those endowed with special skills will invent new methods in this free time for the benefit of the world.