Voices of WRJ: Naso II

This week’s Parashat Naso II begins with the vow of the Nazarites. In many ways, these vows include some of the things we have been doing in this age of staying at home for the coronavirus.

“Throughout the term of their vow as a nazarite, no razor shall touch their heads.”

Check!

Yes, we have gone without a haircut or coloring. We’ve seen on Zoom calls everyone’s true hair color begin to emerge and attempts to tame the ever-growing bangs with clips and headbands. We’ve watched on Facebook and Instagram as people took matters into their own hands or tasked a trusted loved one with scissors.

And like the Nazarites, we’ve been apart from our dead. We’ve been unable to be beside a loved one’s hospital bed as they took their last breath. We’ve had to skip funerals and instead have quiet burials. We’ve had to grieve alone.

Like the Nazarites, we have been separated from our communities. Yet unlike the Nazarites, we have technology.

It has brought us together in ways we could never imagine. As a reporter for the Austin American-Statesman, I have been covering the coronavirus since it began to hit Texas. In the middle of covering the sickness and death, I have tried to find stories of hope.

We have had Zoom weddings and Zoom bat mitzvahs. We have had neighbors text neighbors to launch birthday parades and social distance picnics. And we have watched as people posted photos of their teddy bear hunts and painted rock finds on Nextdoor.

Never has WRJ’s motto “Stronger Together” felt so resonant. We have all been in this together. We have grieved as a community the loss of normalcy, the loss of connection, and even the loss of being able to find staples in the store. We have also grieved the loss of hundreds of thousands of people worldwide.

In a parashah that begins with restrictions for a people, it closes with the priestly blessing that has been said over children, converts, wedding couples, anyone ready to embark on a new phase of their life for centuries:

Yevarechecha Adonai, V'Yishmerecha
Ya'er Adonai Panav Eleycha, ViChoneka
Yisa Adonai Panav Eleycha, V'Yasem Lecha Shalom

Adonai bless you and protect you!
Adonai deal kindly and graciously with you.
Adonai bestow favor upon you and grant you peace.

May God grant us all peace, deal kindly with us and protect us as we begin to emerge slowly, and hopefully safely, from our homes. And may we, like the Nazarites, continue to embrace the restrictions that help our communities be stronger together.

Ken yehi ratzon; may this be God’s will.

Nicole Villalpando is the secretary of Women of Reform Judaism, a past Southwest District president and a past president of her sisterhood, Congregation Beth Israel in Austin, Texas. She and husband Rob have two children, 16-year-old Ava and 19-year-old Ben.