With 2020 in the rear view mirror, we are seeing backwards. Unlike January 1, 2020, when we could not see forward.
Our rear view vision as 2020 turns is blurred, however, a lot less clear than it was on January 1, 2020, when we could not see forward at all. In fact, the last time we checked with the opthamologist, we could not see 20/20 at all, so why suddenly expect it?
Remember “Vision 2020,” the forward-looking initiative of the Allied Jewish Federation in 2000 to build a larger, more vigorous, more active Jewish community by 2020? The merits of the initiative aide, funny things always happen to predictions: things like 9/11, the Great Recession, Chicago Cubs World Series triumph, unconventional presidents, smart phones, Arab Spring, Vladimir Putin, China risen, Iran ascendant, Internet explosion, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, multi-multi-billionaires, oh, let us not forget, COVID pandemic; oh, George Floyd; oh, corrosive election! No “Vision 2020” could not foresee any of this. Even a short 20 years ago, can you believe — a world without Facebook, Twitter and Amazon dominant?
2020 rear view vision is clearest when it sees the things that never changed, the things we thought had changed or surely soon would changed. Our rose-colored vision in 2000 dimmed to the vanishing point in 2020 as we saw these things clearest: anti-Semitism, poverty, slavery, dictatorships, genocides around the globe, a divided America. Oh, how optimistic things seemed in 2000 (in “Y2K” — remember that? when the world was going to come tumbling down?).
It didn’t tumble down, but, 2020 vision or no, we are now working from home, looking very funny in our ubiquitous masks, espying each other suspiciously, waiting in line to enter a half-empty store, hearing a lot of devastating news, hearing the shofar in the park, believing in the preventive power of vaccines (even if we don’t intend to get one) more than in the power of G-d, counting on free money, marveling at the likes of grocery workers, sanitation workers and janitors, arguing over the priority of criminals in vaccine distribution, wondering and re-wondering when all this be over, and wisely listening to one man, unelected, more than to any elected official — Dr. Fauci.
2020, 2000, 1000 . . . whenever . . . who ever looked forward or backward to a time when some Arabs would enthusiastically make peace with Jews? Pinch your skin.
If only . . . if only I could spend more time with my spouse and children. If only not . . . if only Icould escape my loneliness, or my abusive spouse. Neither Vision 2020 in 2000 nor January 1 in 2020 could see the time ahead when we would realize how good it was to be together, or how bad it was to be together. It all came on so fast, zoom zoom, in a few days in March.
So irrelevant seemed to be the prospect of self-driving cars, which, of course, were inevitable, sort of like google glasses, which were inevitable; the failed promise of neither of which holds the same sense of disaster in a slower world. What? A 2020 slower than 2000? This, too, no one could predict in 2000.
As for 2021, we shall let it be. We can see it forward no more than we could see January 1, 2020 forward. All we know is that we are still here, still breathing, still moved by planetary convergences, still witnessing weddings, circumcisions, Bar and Bat Mizvahs, still counting on the sun to come up tomorrow, still seeing cars and buses on the streets and planes in the air, still knowing that many stores are open, the grass is about to turn green in the spring, the snow to descend now, the newspaper to be published, the hospital to be there if we need it, the grocery shelves to be stocked, the blessing of Shabbos to quiet our worries every week.
Copyright © 2021 by the Intermountain Jewish News
