Since the beginning of the corona crisis, my family has lived in three different homes on two continents. Perhaps for this reason, I immediately connected with what educator Aviah Sadeh wrote to me concerning her 10th grade students in a girls’ boarding school in Even Shmuel.
Her advice is excellent for any time in life we encounter uncertainty:
“Every day there are new directives. Not all the girls can sleep together every night in the dormitory. They attend school on different days and keep changing their dorm rooms and classrooms. Every week we try to predict which students will arrive and which ones will be learning on Zoom, but for all of us it is difficult to plan ahead.
“Girls who ask for an exact schedule are forced to hear the following sentence which has become a kind of code: ‘At the bidding of the Lord they traveled, and at the bidding of the Lord, they encamped.’ These words appear in our parshah and give strength to my students and me during these days.
“They are a wonderful description of our nation’s experience in the desert. Sometimes we set up camp for a short period of time and other times for a much longer period. Sometimes it was comfortable to stay in the same place and other times there was a desire to move on but we were forced to remain where we were.
“Wherever we stopped, however, we immediately set up the Mishkan, the heart of our camp – even if the very next day we would be forced to take it down, pack it up, and move on. Just like we did then, we do now, exercising our flexibility muscle on our journey, trying to bring out the best in each other every stop along the way. I wish success to us all.”