Our entire world continues to search for ways to counteract the rapid, destructive, and deadly spread of this malicious coronavirus. Recognizing that self-isolation is the best weapon in our arsenal, the vast majority of us are hibernating in our homes in ways that we’ve never experienced before. What makes all this particularly bizarre is that while regions of the world have faced a variety of cataclysmic disasters, we’ve never been in a situation where every single corner of the entire world is facing the same exact disaster. Our experience of reality has been dramatically and overwhelmingly upended. And, at the very time that we need the presence of others we are cut off from them. We’ve read stories of loved ones separated by panes of glass, of parents who worry about caring for their children should they contract the disease, of families decimated by an unseen perpetrator.
And yet, astoundingly, one of the most promising treatments will extract blood plasma from those who’ve recovered and introduce it into the systems of those who are severely stricken. (Read more here.)
In a development that is beyond belief, the most basic elements of our blood might be able to flow into the veins of another and give them life. Our very essence can pull another back from the precipice of death. The rabbis of the Talmud (Berachot 5b) tell the story of a rabbi who would visit the ill and merely hold their hand to cure them. But when he fell ill himself he was helpless. The lesson, say our rabbis, is that we need each other to be healed, to be lifted when we are fallen, sustained when we are depleted.
We don’t know if plasma will provide a cure but we do know that we need each other. This world is vast, we are separated by oceans, languages, and cultures, but ultimately the spread of this virus proves how interconnected we are, and reminds us once again, how fundamentally we need each other.
— Rabbi Ron Stern