Note: Both Rabbi Drill and Rabbi Scheff tested positive for Covid, one week apart, during this uptick due to the Omicron variant. Thankfully, both rabbis have had fairly mild symptoms. Last week in Part One of this blog, Rabbi Drill shared her thoughts on her experience in isolation. This week, in Part Two, Rabbi Scheff shares his perspective.

CAVEAT 1: I offer this perspective with complete awareness that there are those whose physical symptoms resulting from Covid-19 have been far more debilitating than my stuffiness or loss of my senses of taste and smell.

CAVEAT 2: I offer this perspective with total appreciation that I am neither alone in my home nor responsible for the care of children.

CAVEAT 3: I offer this perspective with the humble acknowledgement that my colleague, teacher and friend Rabbi Paula Drill is a very different person than I am, despite the fact there are those who say that we are one and the same person.

Day 9 of isolation. I’d love to say I have gained some new insight about myself, or experienced some spiritual renewal. But the truth is that it has been a challenge not to turn on HBO Max and spend every waking hour watching “Succession” (though I have nearly caught up). I have finished 3 books, which is an accomplishment for me, and managed to stay current on my emails.

What is it, I wonder, that makes me feel like I can’t just stay in bed? Who is relying on my productivity such that I can’t power down? Why should I feel guilty finishing the entire chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream container if it is the only thing I can actually taste?

While out on a walk listening to one of my favorite podcasts (“On Being,” with Krista Tippet), I learned about English author Katherine May’s concept of “wintering.” Despite Tippet’s attempts to push the author in the direction of discussing the reflective, spiritual aspect of going inside oneself, May stubbornly sticks to her counter-cultural notion of simply remaining safe and in place: Animals don’t fight the winter. They don’t pretend it is not happening. They prepare and adapt; they hibernate and migrate. “Wintering…,” according to May, “…is a time of withdrawing from the world, maximizing scant resources, carrying out acts of brutal efficiency and vanishing from sight.” And “out of sight” is where transformation occurs as a product of recuperation and replenishment. 

Slowing down, expanding spare time, and getting sleep are, in May’s words, “deeply unfashionable” today. Resting is considered by too many in our society to be a radical act, but it is essential to our being. WInter’s place in the life cycle of nature teaches us this lesson, as does the Jewish concept of shmita (the year of release that occurs every seven years): Life demands that we make time to lie fallow, to be unproductive, and to sleep. Especially when we experience personal physical illness, we must be as generous to ourselves as we are to others; we must be prepared to give to ourselves the gift of rest.

We have learned so many valuable lessons from our experiences of the pandemic in the last two years. If I’ve learned anything new or different in these past days from my own isolation, it is that I must model and practice what I preach. Managing self-imposed expectations, exercising patience, practicing tzimtzum (withdrawal into oneself) and even forgiveness – these are also crucial elements of self-care as we experience our personal wintering.

On this Rosh Chodesh Shevat, the first day of the Hebrew month in which we celebrate the New Year of the Trees, perhaps it behooves us to remember Amanda McBroom’s lyrics sung by Bette Midler:

Just remember in the winter
Far beneath the bitter snows
Lies the seed that with the sun’s love
In the spring becomes the rose.

Dormancy is merely an organism’s temporary cessation of growth and development in a time of environmental stress. It is nature’s coping mechanism, allowing the seed to conserve the energy that will assist it to burst forth when the time is right.

So go ahead and indulge yourself. Give yourself a break. Sleep late. Binge watch. Power down. Hang in there, spring is almost here.

Rabbi Craig Scheff