To turn a phrase our wonderful educational director, Einav Symons, used at our closing ceremony for religious school: “we must put Kavod into Covid.” It is a strange linguistic coincidence that the Hebrew word for honor and the awful virus we are suffering through sound so similar. At first glance, the words seem in direct contrast with one another.
Kavod is about strengthening the bonds we have between one another, it is about holiness and God. Covid represents sickness and death, the very force that is currently tearing our world apart. And, yet, it is also thing that forces us to respect physical boundaries, and to strive even harder to protect the ones we love.
The Ten Commandments, the text traditionally read on the holiday of Shavuot, Kavod is the central word, as in the fifth commandment, “honor your father and mother that your days may be long upon the land God gives you” (Exodus 34:12).
This is one of only two references in Torah to the secret to attaining a long life, the other pertaining to leaving the mother bird if you encounter her while scouring for eggs in Deuteronomy 22:6. The inference is that Kavod, honor, protects one from things like Covid.
Einav, though, was going deeper, asking the students to not let Covid, prevent us from experiencing the things in life that provide us Kavod. Yes, traditional graduations and Bnei Mitzvah ceremonies have been temporarily stolen from us, but that does not mean we should not honor these life changing moments in our individual lives.
Watching our youth find their own approach to these hard times has been inspiring. They have shown us all that there can indeed be Kavod even at this time of Covid.