In the five years since initially masking, podding and sheltering in place, Pittsburghers evolved. New appreciation emerged for simple gatherings, face-to-face interactions, even synagogue attendance. For several community members, peering back at 2020 reveals bright spots; for others, however, revisiting the pandemic prompts lessons learned and lingering realities.
The degree to which COVID-19 is part of one’s story depends upon its level of interference, Squirrel Hill resident Tammy Hepps said. (Hepps is a Chronicle board member.)
“Obviously it was disruptive in all of our lives, but I think it was quite different and a very different challenge for people with kids, let alone people with very little kids,” she said. “Personally, I wasn’t going into an office before COVID. I lost my job at the beginning of COVID, and that created, for a time, a lot of stress beyond just ‘What is happening to the world.’”
Where should we go?
Like other interviewees for this story, Hepps was asked about comments she made to the Chronicle five years earlier. In March 2020, days into the pandemic, she spoke about the disorienting experience of celebrating Shabbat at Congregation Beth Shalom amid uncertain horizons.
On March 13, 2020, Beth Shalom’s Rabbi Seth Adelson emailed congregants and explained the synagogue would shutter that Saturday evening.
Hours before doors closed on March 14, Hepps and other shulgoers received pre-packaged snacks. In lieu of allowing people to gather as usual after Saturday morning services, synagogue administrators determined it was best to send people home with “kiddush to-go.”
At the time, Hepps described that Shabbat as both mournful and bewildering: “We were all saying goodbye to each other and not knowing for how long. Every moment was like acknowledging that we don’t know when the next time we will be together again having Shabbat.”
“For someone like me, community is my stability,” she said. “I count on Shabbat every week as a time to see friends, chat and hang out after shul for hours. I know that Shabbat begins and ends at a certain time; but to think that it’s not a part of my week, to be in community with other people, feels destabilizing at a time when everything feels very unstable.”
Beth Shalom, like other congregations, eventually reopened. But changes were noticeable.
Cameras in the sanctuary and Zoomed services gave those at home a way to tune in, which is “beautiful, but you’ll never put it back in the box,” Hepps told the Chronicle last week. “I worry about all these institutions where we broke something that we can never really quite glue back together. We taught people that they don’t need to be in person. We taught people that they can move forward without being in community in the same way. And I say move forward — and not move forward healthfully — because I think that’s part of the story. We live in an age where people would do better to feel more connections, not fewer.”
Check yourself before you wreck yourself
Throughout spring 2020, as lights darkened across Pittsburgh’s hubs, efforts to combat isolation were underway. Nearly 16 months before terms like “social distancing” became common, Angela Joy Miskanin, a psychotherapist at JFCS, preached togetherness. Whether in group settings or individual sessions, Miskanin encouraged those impacted by the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting to create community and pay attention.
Often, Miskanin urged listeners to turn to art.
Scribbling on a page, taking acrylic to paper or creating a keepsake can “tell a story” and offer help, she said in August 2020.
While Pittsburghers sheltered at home, Miskanin and colleagues delivered art-based virtual support and reminded participants to heed their feelings. Certain activities, like following endless news cycles, prompt adrenaline rushes; greater self-awareness is important, Miskanin said in March 2020.
Five years later, titration — the ability to “lean in towards what is distressing, and then pulling back” — remains essential, she told the Chronicle recently. It’s about building a relationship with oneself and recognizing “how much is too much. When do I need to pull back? When am I really letting myself sink into hearing too many pieces of bad news, or what one perceives as bad news?”
Miskanin, still a psychotherapist at JFCS, noted how reaching a five-year anniversary — or any milestone, holiday, or simply encountering present turmoil — can elicit old emotions.
“We might start to feel, again, a sense of heightened activation or intensity, or even a sense of panic, and we’re not really sure why or where it’s coming from,” she said. “It’s important to recognize what has worked or what has been revealed to be ‘what really matters.’”
Months before pandemic lockdowns began, something already apparent to Pittsburghers was that “we need each other,” she said. “We need community. Asking for help is really crucial, and showing up in support of each other can be incredibly critical.”
We can’t stop and we won’t stop
Rabbi Elisar Admon spent 2020 continuing a long-standing tradition. Although the pandemic altered familiar religious observances for Jews worldwide, Admon recognized an opportunity to apply millennia-old rulings to modern circumstances.
Shortly after the pandemic began, Admon and other members of Pittsburgh’s Orthodox Jewish burial society consulted Rabbi Elchonon Zohn from the National Association of Chevra Kadisha.
Those meetings, Admon said in October 2020, indicated how New York-based burial societies worked with the New York City Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, infectious disease specialists and Jewish legal authorities to establish best practices.
The takeaway from those conversations, Admon said, was that Pittsburgh’s Orthodox chevra kadisha could continue performing in-person taharot (ritual purifications) but with slight modifications: Practitioners of each tahara numbered fewer than four; and members not only traveled to the deceased in separate vehicles, but upon arriving properly donned personal protection equipment and maintained appropriate distancing throughout the ritual.
“It was not an easy experience,” Admon said last week. “It taught us a lot of new things, like how to find a loophole in halacha but fulfill an obligation without breaking COVID protocols.”
Admon remains a member of Pittsburgh’s Orthodox chevra kadisha and a military chaplain. He also now serves as head of Gesher Hachaim, a Squirrel Hill-based Jewish funeral home.
Looking back on the pandemic is in some ways empowering, he said.
“A lot of times we have situations where we don’t know what to do. And halacha, Jewish law, is so beautiful, it’s so amazing. You can always find a way to fulfill the obligation,” he said. “For me as a military guy, it’s interesting knowing that in any situation in life we have a way to do things.”
The pandemic was akin to a “wake-up call from God,” Admon continued. “It was a great lesson on how to live, how to still have connections with people and to recognize the beauty of life even though we were under COVID regulations. The message for us is that things come up, things change, and we have to know how to deal with that.”
From this day forward
Stefanie Small doesn’t like retrospectives.
“To be honest, I hate them,” the JFCS director of clinical services told the Chronicle last week.
Too often, revisiting the past leads to a focus on “the sadness and the harshness,” she said. Take the 1918 Spanish flu for instance: “Nobody’s talking about the good stuff that came out of that.” As opposed to merely acknowledging that this month marks five years since the arrival of COVID-19, Small would rather people say, “OK, it happened, and now what? What do we do with that?”
In many ways, that message is similar to what Small shared five years ago.
By the end of March 2020, as Pittsburghers started realizing the pandemic wasn’t just a two-week retreat from reality, Small’s advice was to “exert control over the situation.”
She encouraged homebound professionals to create boundaries: “People should get dressed and wear some approximation of what they would wear to work, because psychologically it is giving you an ability to make the differential between home and work.”
Months later, as winter set in, Small joined other mental health professionals in encouraging Pittsburghers to recognize the pandemic’s eventual end and to stay positive.
“We have to be future focused,” she said last week. “We take the past, we transform it in the present and move towards the future.”
While we don’t have to look for a silver lining to the pandemic, she said, “if it’s there, we need to acknowledge it.”
Small pointed to the emergence of post-March 2020 virtual medical visits.
“Telehealth existed before, but it was not used regularly, and not by everybody by any means,” she said. “Now, telehealth is just a matter of life. To have it available, especially in Pittsburgh winters, is a very helpful thing. People don’t have to forgo their therapy session because there is ice on the parkway or all over Squirrel Hill.”
Although telehealth proved to be a pandemic success, virtual school was not, she said.
Shifting students to remote platforms decreased instructional time and hindered student learning, according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation. While nearly 30% of all students were chronically absent during the pandemic, isolation increased. Time on electronic devices rose and physical activity decreased. Additionally, rates of stress, anxiety and depression surged.
Looking back on the pandemic, it’s easy to see “there are things that we got wrong,” Small said.
Nearly three-quarters of U.S. adults said the pandemic did more to “drive the country apart than to bring it together,” according to Pew Research Center.
“We all have regrets from those five years,” Small said. “We can all look back and say, ‘Why did I do that? I should have pushed for X, and instead I let Y and Z happen.’” But the beauty of reaching a milestone is recognizing that “what was in the past, I can’t change,” she said. “I can only look towards the future.”
Speaking with the Chronicle last week, Small suggested a practice she promoted five years earlier: communication.
“Not on Facebook, not on Instagram, not on X. Social media isn’t communication. Walk over to your neighbor’s porch, go to a synagogue event or services,” she said. “The pandemic didn’t let us meet in person for a very long time and we lost a connection because of that. One of the first things people did when pandemic restrictions were lifted was not to pick up the phone and call someone. It was to go out and be with people, in person, together. That’s the lesson that we have to continue. That needs to thread through all of our activities — in-person connection. People need to be together. We can’t lose that again.” PJC
Adam Reinherz can be reached at areinherz@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.
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