COVID+5: The Individual and the Community
N. Daniel Korobkin
Many lessons have been learned in the five years since COVID first changed our lives. Hopefully, governments, the medical community, and public policy experts will be better prepared to make decisions should, God forbid, some event of similar scale ever arise. Many mistakes were made, at every level. On one hand, with such an unprecedented, worldwide trauma, it could hardly have been otherwise. But the effects of those errors have generated suspicion, mistrust, and cynicism about our governmental, medical, communal, and even our religious institutions. Hopefully, these institutions will, in the future, accept and transmit new modalities for unprecedented events with greater humility and caution.
To utilize one metaphor from the pandemic, we’ve heard of medical professionals discussing “regular COVID” and “long COVID,” the unfortunate aftereffect that has lingered for a significant percentage of the population. The symptoms of “long COVID” have been general lethargy, headaches, brain fog, and cold-like symptoms for protracted periods. Similarly, there were temporary impacts of COVID on our communities for a period of about two years. But there is “long COVID” that still lingers to some degree in our shuls, schools, and communities. Just as in biological “long COVID,” most people have not been affected, the same can be said about the Jewish community.
When COVID first hit North America in February 2020, I was on my way home from the Conference of Presidents annual conference in Israel, in my first year as president of the Rabbinical Council of America. This was clearly not what I had expected to be working on during my presidency. All the agenda items that we had set out for the RCA had to be scrapped in order to address the crisis that our communities were facing, together with the rest of the world. The RCA worked closely with the Orthodox Union, our poskim, and other organizations to set up policies and protocols for shuls and mikvaot, based on what our health care professionals were telling us. People were dying in horrifying numbers, and the panic and anxiety were palpable. This resulted in policies that were extremely cautious, some would argue overly so. At the same time, we noted that other segments of the Orthodox world were less cautious in their policies, even to the point of ignoring legal restrictions that were imposed by federal and local governments in an effort to stem the tide of infection. This splintering in policy within the Jewish community has also played a role in what we’ve seen in the aftermath of the pandemic.
The observations I offer are based upon what has happened in my own community of Thornhill, Ontario. In Canada in particular, the COVID governmental restrictions placed upon houses of worship were strict in the extreme. My observations are also based on what I’ve noted as a past president of the RCA and in consultation with many of my colleagues serving pulpits throughout North America.
Several new manifestations emerged in the Jewish community as a result of the pandemic, some positive and some negative. In this respect, COVID was like sunlight casting light on realities upon our communal infrastructures and the constituents of those infrastructures. As our rabbis teach, the sun often affects different subjects in different ways: It bleaches colored fabric while at the same time darkening human skin. (See Kli Yakar’s commentary at the beginning of Parashat Re’eh.) In the same vein, COVID has affected different stakeholders in very different ways. Here, then, is a partial list of what has noticeably changed in recent years:
- For some, COVID was a way to break free of the formal synagogue structure. The current trend within society is to customize the individual’s experience and consumption product, like Starbucks coffee. Today, the customer expects to have his cup of coffee made exactly to his specifications. This has spilled over to general expectations of any communal service. The idea of creating one’s own minyan in a backyard or basement is now so commonplace that shuls that used to have large sanctuaries are now struggling to fill the pews. More people than ever before have become “shteibel hoppers,” going from one shul to the next depending upon what’s going on, the length of the service, and whether or not a deluxe hot Kiddush will be served after davening.
- Another type of parishioner who left the shul was the person who was the anti-establishmentarian. As mentioned above, one of the aftereffects of the pandemic was society’s diminished trust in our governmental and medical leaders. This wasn’t just the case in the aftermath of the pandemic, when, for example, it was discovered that masks were largely ineffective. During the pandemic, we noticed that those who disagreed with the mask requirements for any number of reasons simply refused to comply with the mask mandates that were required by law for people who were attending services. These people viewed the rest of us as having sheep mentality, just going along with whatever our leaders were telling us to do. When told that they needed to comply with the rules, they were able to find literal sanctuary within enclaves of the Jewish community that embraced this anti-establishment mentality. Many Chabad shuls, street minyanim, and shteibelach grew as a result.
- Another type of synagogue member who changed during COVID is the so-called “socially Orthodox.” That is, people who had been attending shul for years, but for social and not religious purposes, since they had long ago stopped feeling any kind of spiritual uplift from tefilla. Such a person persists within Jewish communities not out of a desire for religious devotion, but rather out of a desire to be socially cohesive within that community deemed to be overall wholesome, friendly, and to be meeting their emotional and social needs. During COVID, these people simply checked out of synagogue life since their very reason for attending synagogue – the social benefit – had been stripped away. Some of these people came back after the pandemic, while others did not. Those who returned wanted to restore to their lives that social benefit that the synagogue was now once again providing. Those who did not return came to some cost-benefit analysis (mostly on a subconscious level) that it was either too expensive or otherwise too much of a price to pay to resume synagogue life on Shabbat after having been away for so long. Some of these socially Orthodox chose a compromise position: Instead of abandoning the synagogue entirely, they converted to becoming JFKers, or showing up for shul after services, “Just for Kiddush.” The JFK phenomenon has become so pronounced in the post-COVID community that there is no longer a stigma acting this way or even embracing a JFK identity. Before, people would quietly and somewhat embarrassingly sneak into Kiddush, at least feigning to have davened. Today, I’m aware of a place that proudly calls itself the “JFK Shul” as a way of attracting new adherents. I say this without passing any judgment, since in the end, this may prove to be an effective tactic, in line with our Sages’ dictum, “He who comes for ulterior motives will eventually come for the right reasons”(Pesahim 50b).
- The “Zoom” phenomenon: Fortunately, with the exception of a small number of Orthodox rabbis, the majority of our poskim ruled that one could not constitute a minyan over video conference. (There are many details to this psak, such as the difference between constituting and leading a minyan vs. being “mitztaref” to a live minyan, which are beyond the scope of this essay. See here for example.) This prescient psak resulted in ensuring that people would eventually return to daven with a live minyan in shul. But there were other aspects of the Zoom phenomenon that have had lasting effects. During COVID, shiurim and educational presentations that had been previously attended in-person now perforce were video-conferenced. After COVID, some realized that even though they could return to a live shiur, they didn’t have to. Furthermore, once a shiur is being offered over Zoom, it really didn’t make much difference whether they were listening to a local instructor or a teacher on the other side of the world. For many, it also was no longer a priority to participate in a live shiur since most classes were recorded. Daf Yomi is one prime example of this phenomenon. Shiurim that used to have dozens of live attendees at the local shul saw reduced attendance, because a person could listen to the Daf remotely, and why listen to the local maggid shiur, when certain teachers on video platforms are often more engaging/entertaining than their local option. This has had both positive and negative effects. On the one hand, it is likely that more people than ever before are learning Daf Yomi (and Torah in general) due to the explosion of podcasts and videos that are now available. On the other hand, not being live with a maggid shiur is, from an educational standpoint, not as effective for the student as being part of a live shiur. It is noteworthy that people today listen on their smartphones and iPads to the Daf. While some have the Gemara open and are attentive and engaged, others are listening while driving to or from work, or while doing some other menial task. Invariably, the comprehension and retention rates of someone listening to a podcast will not be as significant as someone who is sitting around the table with a Maggid shiur.
- Synagogue membership: In my synagogue we’ve noticed that while, thank God, we’ve been able to maintain our current membership, there are a number of families, mostly from the younger generation, who no longer seem to feel it is their responsibility to pay synagogue dues to shuls where they daven regularly. I know of a handful of young men who sit in the back of my shul every Shabbat. They’ve been solicited either by myself or members of our shul board, with great diplomacy and gentleness, to join the shul, whether at a regular membership rate or at a reduced rate. The response is sometimes a shrug of the shoulders or some other kind of noncommittal response. Now that our communities are so variegated with multiple minyanim, some of our younger attendees see no reason to commit their hard-earned incomes to paying shul membership. They may feel a sense of entitlement to go where they wish without any financial responsibilities for a number of reasons, but this phenomenon seems to me to be directly related, at least in part, to the COVID issue. It is related to the splintered nature of the community, as well as the general distrust and negative attitude toward communal infrastructures that also result from the COVID mistrust phenomenon.
- The BAYT had always been a “mega-shul,” a place where a person could come on Shabbat morning and choose from any number of minyanim, starting at different times and going at different speeds. This trend has only become stronger since COVID. We restructured our sundry minyanim by restoring some of the pre-COVID options, eliminating ones that weren’t working as well, and instituting new minyanim that are attracting a new audience that previously hadn’t found their place. This is one of the more positive manifestations of COVID, in that by being forced to close and then reopen, we were better able to assess our strengths and weaknesses and make the necessary adjustments.
These are some initial reflections on what has taken place since COVID. On the one hand, Talmud Torah has increased due to the community’s realization that Torah resources are available to anyone from the privacy of their own homes. On the other hand, people seem less committed to the institutionalized physical structures within the Jewish community. Where this trend will continue is hard to know. With time, patience, and the ability to adapt to the new facts on the ground, we will hopefully succeed in strengthening our shuls and bringing Jews of all stripes back to their religious homes.
R. Daniel Korobkin is the rabbi of Beth Avraham Yosef of Toronto Congregation (“The BAYT”).
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Larry Rothwachs
Five years have passed since the COVID pandemic began, time enough for meaningful reflection. Among the many aspects of life that COVID disrupted, one area continues to weigh heavily on my mind: how we celebrate our semahot—our weddings, bar and bat mitzvas, and other milestone events.
In the years before March 2020, our community witnessed an unchecked progression toward increasingly lavish celebrations. Events that once centered on family and meaning had transformed into grand productions, often involving expenditures that strained or even broke household budgets. Stories—not apocryphal—circulated about individuals who fell into significant debt merely to afford weddings that lasted hours but cost tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars. Despite occasional communal initiatives to impose guidelines, like takkanot capping spending in certain communities, the trend continued virtually unabated. Apart from minor shifts, such as the growing acceptance of digital invitations, the communal appetite for extravagance showed no signs of diminishing.
Then came COVID. Suddenly, large-scale events became illegal, declared unsafe, and functionally impossible. Celebrations of all kinds were canceled, postponed, or dramatically reimagined. Some families understandably chose to wait until restrictions eased. But many others, recognizing the importance of the moment, adapted immediately. They held intimate ceremonies with immediate family, backyard weddings, and Zoom bar and bat mitzvas. Meals were pared down to a handful of close relatives. Ceremonies became shorter and more heartfelt. Dancing was understated, if it happened at all.
What proved most remarkable and deeply moving was how these COVID semahot were received. They were often described as more beautiful, more emotional, and more genuine than their pre-pandemic counterparts. (While these adjustments were undoubtedly difficult for many families who had envisioned different celebrations, they were generally met with understanding and even a surprising degree of joy and satisfaction.) I recall attending weddings and bar mitzvas during that period where the emotion in the room was palpable, the meaning inescapable. Stripped of elaborate venues, endless courses, and professional entertainment, the essence of the simcha shone through: family, connection, joy, and holiness.
It seemed, at least to me, that we had stumbled upon a profound revelation. I thought this might represent a lasting correction. Perhaps, even after the pandemic ended, we would carry these lessons forward. Perhaps we would realize that we don’t need the trappings of wealth and spectacle to make a simcha beautiful. Perhaps our community would re-center its priorities, celebrating milestones with sincerity and simplicity.
I remember expressing this hope to others, both privately and in public forums. I recall naively saying that even when COVID ended, we would never fully return to our old ways. We had witnessed too clearly how powerful a simple simcha could be.
But I was wrong.
I first began to sense it even before the pandemic ended, during my own experience of making a simcha in the midst of COVID. A few years earlier, we had celebrated the wedding of one of our children under normal circumstances. It was our family’s introduction to the world of contemporary Jewish weddings. We did our best to focus on what mattered, but it was immediately clear how strong the pressures were—the expectations, the norms, the endless ways that simplicity seemed to require justification.
Then, during COVID, we made another wedding. In theory, the limitations imposed by the pandemic should have naturally pushed celebrations toward simplicity. Venues were restricted, guest lists were slashed, and many familiar trappings were simply impossible. And yet, even then, I sensed the subtle but steady pull—an instinct that if certain features were absent, we had to “make up” for them in other ways. It was not only about practical realities like inflated costs, though that played a role. It reflected something deeper: a communal muscle memory that even a pandemic could not erase.
The emotional pressure was real. Families wanted to express their joy, vendors wanted to provide their services, and friends and relatives wanted to celebrate. All of it created a gravitational pull back toward the familiar patterns. Even amid lockdowns and uncertainty, even with so much stripped away, there was a yearning—sometimes quiet, sometimes not so quiet—to hold onto elements of grandeur and spectacle.
At that point, I first began to worry. I realized that if these instincts were still so strong, even under such unusual circumstances, then perhaps the communal change I was hoping for would not come as easily as I had imagined. Yet even then, I remained somewhat hopeful. I thought that once the instability of the pandemic passed, once people had time to reflect more calmly, we might recognize the beauty we had rediscovered. I thought we would remember how genuine those smaller semahot had felt. I believed—or at least I wanted to believe—that we would not simply return to the old ways.
But as restrictions lifted and normal life resumed, it quickly became evident that there would be no enduring shift. If anything, the trend toward larger and more elaborate celebrations intensified. Weddings grew even grander. Parties became more opulent. New levels of extravagance emerged that had not even been the norm before 2020.
Anecdotally, and I acknowledge I have no hard data to support this, it appears our community has doubled down on its previous habits. Semahot are now as lavish as ever, perhaps more so. We absorbed no lasting lesson from the COVID experience regarding the nature of our celebrations. The opportunity for meaningful, systemic change came and went, leaving behind only faint memories of backyard weddings and intimate family gatherings.
This realization is deeply sobering. It feels as though we were given an extraordinary opportunity, one that came at an immense cost and with real suffering, to reflect, recalibrate, and shift our communal culture. And we let it slip through our fingers.
I often think back to the conversations we had during that time. After these smaller weddings and bar mitzvas, it was common to hear guests—and even hosts—speak with a certain awe. People would say, “There was something so real about tonight,” or “This is the kind of simcha I’ll remember forever.” There was a widespread sense that we had stumbled upon something precious, something stripped of all the extra layers that so often obscure the essence. Without huge crowds, orchestras, and elaborate décor, we could actually feel the heartbeat of the simcha itself—the kedusha of kiddushin, the pride of a parent reciting a bar mitzva speech, the unfiltered joy of family and friends who mattered most.
For many of us, those moments were not merely acceptable substitutes; they were transformative experiences. They offered a glimpse of a kind of joy that was deeper, richer, and closer to what authentic Jewish simcha is meant to be. People spoke about wanting to “hold onto this”—about never wanting to lose the simplicity, the focus, the depth.
And yet, as soon as restrictions lifted, the pull toward old habits proved stronger than the memories. The emotional clarity of those backyard weddings faded faster than we would have imagined. Without consciously realizing it, many of us allowed ourselves to be swept back into the current. The simplicity that once moved us so deeply came to be seen, again, as an unwanted compromise rather than an ideal worth preserving.
Perhaps this is one of the most sobering lessons of all: that even profound experiences can slip away if we do not make a deliberate, determined effort to preserve them.
This is reminiscent of an idea I heard close to 30 years ago in the name of R. Elya Svei zt”l, Rosh Yeshiva of the Philadelphia Yeshiva. He reflected that the extraordinary wealth many segments of the Jewish community enjoy today may itself be a Divine test, though, as he noted, without prophets among us, we must be cautious in making definitive claims about Divine intent. We can only reflect and learn as best we can from the patterns we see. Historically, for most of the two thousand years of our exile, the Jewish people lived in profound poverty. Whether this material deprivation was punitive or simply a consequence of our exilic existence, it certainly served as a necessary correction for a spiritual failure.
The Torah warns about this dynamic explicitly in Parashat Ha’azinu, where it describes what would happen when the Jewish people settled in the Land of Israel: “Jeshurun grew fat and kicked; you grew fat, you grew thick, you became corpulent” (Deuteronomy 32:15). According to this warning, material prosperity would lead to spiritual corruption—indulgence, arrogance, and ultimately rebellion against Hashem. As a consequence, the people would be expelled from the Land. Exile, with all its attendant poverty and hardship, would serve not only as punishment but as a form of rehabilitation, stripping away the excess that had led to spiritual decline.
Now, as the process of redemption slowly unfolds, we see material blessing returning to large parts of our community. R. Svei suggested that this blessing carries with it an implicit challenge: Hashem is giving us another chance. Will we use our newfound prosperity to strengthen Torah, to live with humility and responsibility, to honor His name? Or will we again fall into patterns of indulgence, competition, and spiritual forgetfulness?
This idea struck me deeply, and during the early days of COVID it became even more vivid. Here was the test laid out before us: celebrations stripped of excess, families rejoicing with sincerity and simplicity, communities reconnecting to the essence of simcha. It felt as if Hashem was showing us, “See? This is possible. This is what true joy can look like.”
Yet five years later, we find ourselves largely back where we started, if not further entrenched in a culture of overindulgence.
I recognize that communal change is not simple. Social norms are powerful forces, difficult to resist. When so much communal energy flows in a certain direction, it is extraordinarily difficult for individuals to chart a different course.
It is important to clarify that my purpose is not to offer practical proposals or solutions. That conversation, if there is interest, will have to come later, and I would be eager to participate. But before we can think about action, we must first be willing to look honestly at where we are. To acknowledge the opportunity that COVID presented, and the extent to which we, as a community, have allowed it to pass us by.
Perhaps it is not too late. Individuals, families, and communities can still choose differently. We can still embrace the vision of simcha that prioritizes meaning over display, holiness over extravagance.
Imagine a wedding celebrated with heartfelt dancing, simple but delicious food, meaningful divrei Torah, and genuine simcha. Imagine a bar mitzva where the emphasis rests on the young man’s davening, leining, and words of Torah, rather than on the extravagance of the party.
We glimpsed this reality during COVID. It was authentic. It was possible. And perhaps it still is.
Choosing new paths is never easy. It requires courage, intentionality, and a willingness to swim against the tide. It means risking misunderstandings, disappointing expectations, and foregoing certain forms of recognition. But the reward can be immeasurable: celebrations that are not only financially sustainable but spiritually elevating; moments that our children will remember not for their glitz but for their warmth, sincerity, and connection to family and to Hashem.
As we look back five years later, let us not merely mourn the missed opportunity. Let us ask ourselves how we can, even now, reclaim some of what was almost within our grasp. We do not need to return to backyard tents or masked chuppahs to reclaim what we nearly discovered. We are no longer bound by the physical restrictions of those days, but the spiritual clarity they offered still remains within reach. We can choose to build celebrations that reflect the same sincerity, the same depth, the same unfiltered joy that so many of us felt during those simpler semahot. We can honor what was almost within our grasp by carrying it forward—freely, deliberately, and with the strength to remember what truly matters most.
Larry Rothwachs serves as Rabbi of Cong. Beth Aaron in Teaneck.