Photo by Eric Schucht
The Edlavitch DC Jewish Community Center marked the anniversary of coronavirus pandemic with an outdoor vigil on March 14, as nearby churches held their own commemorations.
Standing on the building steps with about 15 others, Edlavitch CEO Dava Schub said the losses from COVID-19 are overwhelming and hard to comprehend.
“There’s no way of grasping quite the totality of the scope of the loss and the damage in our community and beyond that COVID has caused,” Schub said. “But I do think that there is healing in marking time.”
Hazzan Sabrina Sojourner led the group in recitation of her poem “Among the Clouds.”
“I write this for the ones I’ll too soon be missing. For whenever you pass if I’m still here, it will have been too soon that I was without you,” a line from the poem reads.
Barbara Goldschmidt, of Washington, said she is both saddened by the losses and hopeful for the future.
“After a year of being in isolation, the sorrows and the losses — it’s incalculable,” Goldschmidt said. “And we won’t really know until we’re further along, what the long-term effects are going to be. So I’m looking forward to the spring and the light at the end of the tunnel.
