In Talmud we read, “Do not separate yourself from the community.” אַל תִּפְרֹשׁ מִּן הַצִּבּוּר -
Al tifrosh min ha-tsibur - Pirkey Avot 2:14
 
This has been a guiding principle, a central tenet of Jewish tradition for nearly two thousand years. For the rabbis of the Talmud it was paramount to keep the community together and foster communal harmony. How painful it is now for rabbis to say: Separate yourself! Stay at least six feet away from everyone but the members of your household!
 
In the medieval masterpiece called the Zohar we find the Aramaic expression aval hashta, meaning but now. This term is used to link together two contrasting ideas or experiences. Often we use “but” as a neg-ative: “I thought I had the right answer, but I was wrong.” Aval hashta doesn’t negate what came before. In-stead it emphasizes the unique character, the opportunities and the exigencies of the current moment. In the Zohar aval hashta signals that an innovative insight is about to be revealed by the mystic master Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai or one of his devoted companions, as they wander through the ancient land sharing pas-sionate discussions of the Torah, whose every word they cherish as expressions of Divine wisdom.
 
It is as though the text is saying, “Interesting interpretations of the verse that we are discussing have been offered, but in the particular, singular, and unique situation in which we now find ourselves, we must seek another meaning -- another secret -- which cannot be revealed without an awareness of the singularity of this occasion. This is the Torah of the specific moment, and those aspects of Torah revealed in this mo-ment are unique.”   (Melila Hellner-Eshed, A River Flows From Eden, page 175)
 
Let us now ask: What is the Torah, the Teaching, of this difficult and dangerous, unprecedented his-torical moment?
 
For a quarter of a century it’s been a joy for me to facilitate bringing people together for festive Jewish events, helping us make connections with one another and with Our Source. I love to sit with my students, sharing ideas and dreams. Also, it’s been a privilege to gather with mourners, making a minyan to support each other in times of sorrow. Aval hashta-but now, I’m learning to make connections via Zoom, Skype and telephone, and intensifying my efforts to connect with others on a subtle plane of awareness, both formally in meditation and prayer, and as I go about my day, calling to mind the many people in my life and in my heart.
 
For thousands of years we’ve learned, “Do not separate yourself from the community,” aval hashta-but now, we learn, “Distance yourself from others.”
 
This crisis offers us an opportunity to redefine community in our own minds. Often we speak of com-munities of mutual interest or origin, as in “the Jewish community,” “the arts community,” “the medical com-munity,” “the environmental community,” and so on. Aval hashta-but now, in the midst of this pandemic, we are challenged to go beyond our sub-groups and turn our thoughts to the global community. The word in our verse translated as community or congregation is צִּבּוּר - tsibur. This noun derives from the Biblical Hebrew verb meaning to pile in a heap, to heap up. In our Torah story Joseph advises Pharoah how to sur-vive the seven years of famine that he predicts will follow the seven years of abundance:
 

 
Wiser than many world leaders today, the ancient Hebrews acknowledged that prosperity doesn’t last forever and a country must have disaster preparedness plans that benefit all the inhabitants. Centuries later Moses confronts another Pharaoh and Egypt is afflicted with plagues. River water turns to blood, and then frogs swarm through the landscape and dwellings. The desperate Pharoah appeals to Moses for help, and Moses agrees to intercede with HaShem to confine the infestation to the river.
 

 
In the Book of Psalms we read: אַךְ־בְּצֶֶ֤לֶם ׀ יִָּֽתְהַלֶךְ־אִּ֗יש אַךְ־הֶֹ֥בֶל יֶהֱמֵָּ֑יוּן יצְבֹּּ֗ר וְָֽלאֹּ־ ידַֹ֥ע מִּי־אֹּסְפָָּֽם׃
Only in shadow (or as a shadow,) a person walks about; futility is their hustle and bustle, heaping up [grain or wealth] and not knowing who will gather in. (Psalm 39:7)
 
Many hundreds of years after the Hebrew Bible was written, the rabbis of the Talmud employed our word tsibur to refer to various kinds of heaps (of sand, coins, olives), but they also repurposed the term to designate the community or congregation. To my ear this implies a very down-to-earth description of heaps, masses, throngs of people. These days we generally eschew those terms, they strike our ears as old fash-ioned and out-of-date. Rather than “the huddled masses” we say “the unsheltered population.” While the meaning is clear, we lose the actual image of numbers of people huddled together in makeshift tents and cardboard houses. We tend to think of orderly congregations and clearly defined communities, and those neat-and-tidy collective nouns shift our attention away from the simple flesh-and-blood facts of the collective human existence.
 
As the new coronavirus makes its way through the throngs and masses of humanity we are starkly reminded of our vulnerable physicality. Last month it was horrifying to see videos of chaos and panic in Chi-nese hospitals, and now coffins have piled up in Italian churches, and bodies are heaped up in refrigerated trailer trucks outside New York hospitals.
 
“Do not separate yourself from the tzibur, the group, the community.” In the past this meant, “Go out, show up, take part!” Aval hastha-but now, while we hunker down at home, separated from each other physi-cally, we can and must strengthen our emotional, intellectual and spiritual connections to the great multitude of our species, 7.8 billion bodies and souls, the human family sharing this small, magnificent planet.
 
Professor Melila Hellner-Eshed describes the term aval hashta-but now as the Zohar’s “portal into mystery,” providing an opening for the reader to join the adventures of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai and his dis-ciples as they make imaginative leaps from the present moment into the mysterious unknown.
 
Right now we all long to go back to the way things were just a few weeks ago. Or do we? Wouldn’t it be better to use this historic moment as a portal into a bold new future? We can envision a future where we say, “We used to tolerate mass poverty across the globe, but now we don’t. We used to be resigned to mil-lions of people without healthcare, nutrition or shelter, but now we have new strategies and alliances. We used to despair of stopping climate change, but now we are resolute. We used to feel hopeless, but now we cultivate hope.
 
B’shalom ~ In peace, Rabbi Naomi