Where Robots Meet Herring

Life has taken us all for a bumpy ride. In Israel, it looks as if the ‘Corona Ride’ is starting to slow down and let us off. We open our doors and walk out a bit dazed, weakened and unstable. We take the first few steps and feel uneasy, insecure, almost incapable of returning to the same pace as we once knew.

But that’s ok – the Israeli weather system has taken care of anyone’s desire to move too fast. We are now in day eight of scorching temperatures that blister in the mid-forties. Just yesterday, three people died from the heat. As everyone cranks up the air conditioning, the electrical grid in Israel hit an all-time high. Children, just returning to school after months of being at home in quarantine, arrive with backpacks and face masks. Yet, because of the heat, they are allowed to take off their masks in school.

Walking down the simmering street in my mask yesterday, I felt as if I could faint, with sweat beading and pooling inside the mask. I quickly did my errands then retreated to the cool safety of home, my hiding place for the last few months.

Despite the fear and anxiety surrounding COVID-19, the mystery villain hiding in droplets emitted by coughs and lurking on door handles, gas pumps and the buttons of bank machines, Israelis are overcoming the unknown in creative ways.

As the world adapts to this new way of being, Israelis do so ‘Sabra style.’ My daughter told me about the camp sites that popped up on lawns in her neighborhood over Pesach. These families, whose tradition is to go camping on the Jordan River or beside Lake Kinneret, promised their kids a Passover camping trip. A promise is a promise so the parents put up tents on their lawns and everyone slept cozily outside their front doorstep.

Only ‘essential’ services were open. These included pharmacies, grocery stores, doctor’s offices, delivery services and smoked herring. Herring? Seems like this is such an important delicacy in Israel, it made the essential services list, with shmaltz and pickled herring delivered to your door. Turns out that herring has selenium, an important mineral that can help protect one from Coronavirus disease progression.

Entrepreneurs did not miss a beat. When weddings were cancelled and postponed, an online registry company, had a plunge in sales. But Bracha Lamm who owns La’Bayit Gifts, decided to think out of the box. Since it was just before Pesach and many families who had always had seders at their parents’ homes were now on their own, Lamm switched to selling Passover items online. She was able to help the suppliers who were stuck with a large inventory of items and connect them with people who did not even own a seder plate.

A pastry chef who specialized in weddings, workshops and festivals saw the same sudden downturn. Suddenly she found herself at home with bored young boys. Inspired by her own children who love baking, she invented a service where she provided a box filled with ingredients and a recipe to families once a week. The next day, she and her boys made a Zoom a class to bake the yummy recipe, sharing her knowledge with kids all over central Israel.

An Israeli robotics company called Robotican took the Coronavirus issue to heart and developed a robot that can enter a patient’s hospital room to check their vitals without the doctor having to make direct contact.

Israel’s Medtronic, a company that produces ventilators, decided to give away their blueprints for free. With a demand in April for hundreds of thousands of machines, the company decided that saving lives was the most important factor in this emergency situation.

On May 4, the Corona ward at Shaarei Tzedek hospital closed as there were no more patients. Nurses, doctors and secretaries celebrated, as seen in this sweet, heart-warming video.

 

We pray this will soon end across the world. During these hard times, there have been countless stories told of charity, unity and creativity from every country affected. Governments in many nations also rallied to the cause, offering assistance through money and loans.

Mired in political crisis after a third election resulted in a deadlock, Israel did not even have a government during Coronavirus. On May 17, after 508 days of infighting, the 35^th Knesset was finally sworn in among affable elbow knocking.

Speaking to family and friends who live in other countries, I sadly realized that Israel was not in the forefront of financial assistance. Far from it. The government offered empty promises to aid its citizens. Seeing the suffering of so many small businesses, I would call this negligence, creating an even bumpier ride for many. Yet perhaps this forced the people to step up to the plate and, in true Israeli style, help themselves. It is the Israeli people who are the true heroes of this harrowing ride.