It’s Friday afternoon, and Rabbi Joe Hample is frazzled, and laughing, at the same time.
He’s three days out from Rosh Hashanah, the start of the Jewish New Year, and he still hasn’t tested the microphones for the spiritual takes of social media to follow this month.
There’s the matter of his sermon, too.
Make that, sermons.
Lots of editing – and full-on rewriting – courtesy of the upsurge in the pandemic.
“I had them all written by summer,” said Hample, who heads Morgantown’s Tree of Life Congregation.
“They all carried the same theme,” he continued.
“Every single one. ‘Thank God, the Pandemic’s Over.’ Which now, it clearly isn’t. Who knew?”
Hample has been at Tree of Life for eight years now. The tiny synagogue on South High Street caters mainly to academics and other professionals associated with WVU.
Which suits Hample, who was a Harvard-trained Russian scholar and financial analyst before answering the call of his faith.
Now, he’s trying to keep steadfast during unsteady times.
Last year, during the crest of the first wave of the coronavirus, he taught himself how to use Zoom and other social media platforms as the doors to his synagogue were closed as a precaution.
He forced himself to go through self-checkout lanes in the grocery store.
And, in an inspired bit of rabbi resourcefulness, he repurposed yarmulkes from bar mitzvahs gone by into facemasks.
With Delta variant roiling, Tree of Life is again dark – but the light of Rosh Hashanah will be carried via Zoom, he said.
“We’re not having any public gatherings,” he said. “That’s too bad, but we need to keep people safe.”
In the meantime, though, the High Holidays commence.
Rosh Hashanah, the aforementioned, begins at sundown Monday and runs through same Wednesday.
Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, follows Sept. 15-16.
Then, there’s Sept. 20-22 and Sukkot, which commemorates the years that Jews spent in the desert on their way to the Promised Land, while also chronicling the ways they were protected by God in the harsh desert climes.
Simchat Torah caps the month Sept. 27-29 as it launches a new cycle of Torah readings.
At Tree of Life, as said, congregants will be in their homes but for Hample and a handful of others, part of the ceremonies will be at the temple for the social media side of it all.
“They can look us up on their computers or call in with their phones,” he said.
Gathering, in many forms
Meanwhile, across town at WVU’s Rohr Chabad Jewish Center on Wiley Street, a tent has been placed outside so students can gather for all the holidays.
“Nothing indoors,” Rabbi Zalman Gurevitz said.
The center also provides facemasks while taking it on faith that students are vaccinated, or at least getting tested.
“We ask that you stay away if you aren’t feeling well,” said Gurevitz, who grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., and studied in New York City, Boston, Israel and England on his way to becoming a rabbi.
“And we want you to talk to people you trust in the medical community about vaccines and the pandemic.”
Both Gurevitz and his wife are Orthodox Jews, meaning they adhere to the 613 commandments of the Torah while keeping kosher – which isn’t always easy in a college town.
They’re also the parents of several young children, while considering the minority of students who frequent the center their spiritual family, as well.
The couple also has been providing take-out meals to those students in accordance of dietary laws.
“We’re able to keep the community,” he said.
“We’re outdoors. We can socially distance. We’re wearing facemasks. We’ll keep our tent for as long as the pandemic is here.”
Meanwhile, the faith, both rabbis said, is forever.
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