Earlier this week, actress Julia Roberts shared on Instagram this poem about quarantining and social distancing
https://www.instagram.com/p/B9uqjEanInA/
“What if you thought of it
as the Jews consider the Sabbath — the most sacred of times?”
Cease from travel. Cease from buying and selling.
Give up, just for now,
on trying to make the world
different that it is.
Sing. Pray. Touch only those
to whom you commit your life.
Center down.”
According to the Algemeiner
Unger wrote the three-paragraph poem, titled “Pandemic,” last week. She said thinking about the “restrictions” observant Jews face during Shabbat helped her form her poem.
“We generally think of restrictions as being a negative,” she told the Chicago Tribune. “But the idea of the Sabbath is that accepting these restrictions — you can’t exchange money, drive a car, work — can be a spiritual discipline that is a source of beauty, a source of the holy, as opposed to just being a pain in the ass.”
I wonder if Julia has shared it with her close friend Richard Gere. I can’t imagine he’d like it too much.