O pinion
Editor’s Letter
One Year of COVID, a Mournful Milestone
BY LIZ SPIKOL
I WENT BACK to my office
in the Jewish Community
Services Building in Center
City the other day to pick
something up, and I noticed an
old editorial lineup document
sitting on my desk. My last
full workday in that office was
March 12, 2020 — exactly one
year ago — and I remember
not taking much home with
me when I left; I assumed I’d be
back in a couple months.

Being there now is like
seeing a prepandemic world set
in amber — my wall calendar
still displays March 2020,
March magazines sit on the
desk and that editorial lineup
is from March 19, with the list
of stories we were working on
for that issue. One of those,
slugged “DOCTORS,” talked
about COVID in the future
tense: “How are doctors
and medical professionals
preparing for coronavirus?”
We allocated 800 words to that
story. We could never have
imagined how many words
we’d devote to the subject in
the months to come.

Now, as the nation marks
this imprecise anniversary, we
offer a few more words about
how the novel coronavirus
has changed our lives. It’s
something a number of news
outlets are doing this week,
and I had an opportunity to
speak with fellow journalists
in other cities about how they
were handling the coverage.

Turns out, a lot depends on
where you live.

For instance, one editor
I spoke with felt it wouldn’t
be right to focus on COVID
deaths in their special issue
because there hadn’t been
many in the community her
publication serves. She felt
she had to respond to the
readers’ experience; for them,
COVID has meant an increase
in isolation and loneliness, a
heavier reliance on technology,
and changes in relationships.

She didn’t feel it would be
appropriate to be mournful.

Here in Philadelphia, in
contrast, we’ve had a number of
COVID-related deaths, as we’ve
chronicled in our “Those We’ve
Lost” series. (At first, I wasn’t
even sure if we should make it
an ongoing series. Now we’re
on Part VII.) Our goal with the
series was to make sure every
person in the Jewish commu-
nity who has died from COVID
is recognized as a unique
human being rather than
merely as a data point. We know
we haven’t covered everyone,
but staff writers Sophie Panzer
and Jesse Bernstein have done
a wonderful job with the infor-
mation available to us. In this
issue, we add two more names
to our series and remember
those we memorialized in the
last year.

Still, as my far-f lung
colleague reminded me,
the COVID story is not all
about death. When I asked
the Exponent crew what the
focus of our coverage should
be for this issue, Bernstein
pointed out that while many
people have died, many more
are still alive and grappling
with the way our lives have
been upended. In this issue, he
writes about the changes the
pandemic has wrought, and
how we’ve adapted to them.

I’ve noticed that when most
people talk about the changes,
they focus more on the daily
irritations than the devas-
tating large-scale effects. I do
it myself — I’ll be annoyed
by a Zoom glitch or the fog
on my glasses while wearing a
mask, and I have to laugh: This
is what’s bothering me? I’m
lucky to be alive, to be healthy,
to have a job; I’m one of the
fortunate people in this histor-
ical moment, and yet here I am,
fuming because someone is not
on mute. I suppose the human
inclination toward aggra-
vation is simply hard-wired.

And kvetching is part of our
birthright. But it’s also true that when
there’s so much pain and loss,
it’s simply more sensible, and
socially acceptable, to complain
of minor afflictions than to howl
with grief. In fact, in just a few
weeks, the Exponent staff will
go back to working in our office
— and return to an approxima-
tion of normalcy. I’ll take down
my March calendar, recycle
those magazines and prep a
story lineup for an April issue.

I’ll head to the corner store at
lunchtime for an egg sandwich
and drink the vending machine
coffee during an afternoon
slump. I’ll fight traffic on my
way home and resent the person
who cuts me off.

Assuming the worst truly
is over, we’ll be tempted to put
the horror of this year behind
us and move on; Jews know
plenty about starting over
without self-pity. But a year
like this leaves scars, and some
of us will need more help than
others, whether pragmatically
or emotionally. We all respond
differently to trauma and dislo-
cation; empathy, not judgment,
is what’s required.

Whatever happens, the
Exponent will be here for you.

Stick with us, reach out, stay
well and be safe. We hope to
see you — in person — real
soon. l
Medical Dramas Perpetuate Orthodox Stereotypes
BY SHOSHANA GOTTLIEB
ON FEB. 9, the Jewish internet
was shocked by a scene
from the TV medical drama
“Nurses.” The shocking part
should be that a clip from a
20 MARCH 11, 2021
subpar Canadian medical
drama only airing on NBC
because of a COVID-induced
lack of programming managed
to go semiviral. But no. The
video went viral because of
what many believed was an
anti-Semitic portrayal of a
Chasidic patient.

In the clip, a Chasidic man
(with the worst fake payes I’ve
ever seen) is told that he’d need
a bone grafted from a dead
body inserted into his leg.

“A dead goyim leg,” his
father says, “from anyone. An
Arab? A woman?”
“Or God forbid an Arab
woman,” one of the nurses
retorts. She later uses a story
about King David to help
convince the patient to have
the procedure done because
obviously her Christian under-
standing of the story would
be enough to convince the
man to forego his (inaccurate)
religious beliefs.

This scene would never
happen. For starters, the correct
phrase would be “goyishe
leg,” as a Chasidic man would
surely know. Additionally, it’s
highly unlikely that hearing
a story about King David
would change a Chasidic Jew’s
JEWISH EXPONENT
religious convictions.

But most
important, Orthodox Jews have zero
issues with accepting organs,
or bones, or anything from
non-Jews. This scene is
frustrating because it relies
on harmful, grossly incorrect
stereotypes about Chasidim.

People were enraged, and
rightfully so. NBC ultimately
pulled the episode from its
online platform, and while
the show’s original producers
have apologized in a statement,
NBC has not.

Actually, this clip shouldn’t
come as a surprise. On medical
dramas, too many episodes
have featured some sort of
religious Jew refusing medical
treatment, essentially trying to
martyr themselves.

Take, for example, the first
season of “Grey’s Anatomy.”
One of the storylines on its
eighth episode revolves around
an Orthodox woman who
refuses to get a porcine heart
valve replacement because
they want to put a “pig, a
freaking non-kosher, treif
mammal, into my chest, into
my heart! The very essence of
See Gottlieb, Page 24
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM