This week, both the Jewish and the Christian traditions celebrate spring holidays – at least in the Northern Hemisphere.

I’ve often wondered what it feels like to celebrate seasonal holidays in the opposite season – the High Holy Days in the spring, Passover in the fall, Christmas in midsummer. But that’s a different conversation, one that I would love to have with my Southern Hemisphere readers!

Looking back to the origins of these holidays, Passover recalls the Exodus from Egypt – called in Hebrew Mitzrayim, or the narrow place. The imagery of the splitting of the Sea of Reeds, leading out of the narrow place to the growth of a new nation, has often been compared with the imagery of birth. I know less about Easter, but there is no question that resurrection, rebirth and the Easter bunny all have to do with new beginnings.

This Passover was unlike any other we have ever experienced, hunkered down in our homes, physically separated from one another. Where normally my living room is crowded with guests, sitting shoulder to shoulder, the six of us who are currently living in this house were fortunate to have each other. My father and his partner, locked down in their retirement home in Israel, joined my sister’s seder via Zoom. Everything has screeched to a halt.

As most of the world takes a pause to deal with this pandemic, many questions are being asked about what it will be like after the virus passes. Will we go back to what and whom we were before? Or will we make changes?

Will the inequities that have been exposed so brutally, especially in the United States but also elsewhere, be left as they were? Or will we all work together to make changes?

Will we continue to create pollution at the rate we were doing before? Or will we be more thoughtful before we jump in a car or on a plane?

Will more people work from home? Will business travel rebound, or will Zoom reign supreme? 

Will anyone dare set foot on a cruise ship?

The world is about to be reborn out of the ashes of hundreds of thousands of deaths. Just as each one of us now has the choice to stay home and protect the vulnerable, or go out and selfishly endanger them, we will also need to make choices in the time that comes after. Some choices will be collective, and we might feel that we have little control over them. But many others will come down to the individual, just like they do now.

Will we choose wisely?