STORY AND PHOTO BY KAREN BOSSICK

The irony of this year’s Passover hasn’t escaped Rabbi Robbi Sherwin.

“One of my colleagues said it’s just like the original Passover. Death is coming to your doorstep. Hide in your house,” she recounted.

“The Israelites painted the blood of a lamb over their doors at God’s instruction to ensure that the angel of death would pass over their homes. To mitigate COVID-19—what we’re jokingly calling the eleventh plague--we’re wearing masks and gloves and washing our hands.”

Passover is the most celebrated of all holidays among the Jewish people. It’s a time when multi-generations come together to recall how God brought a people who were slaves for 400 years out of the land of Egypt and tasked them with becoming his partner in creating a better world.

But because of stay-home orders dictated by the coronavirus members of the Wood River Jewish Community and other Jewish communities throughout the world will observe Passover at home this year--some without family and all without the physical presence of community.

Sherwin’s own 87-year-old father will observe Passover alone because of the restrictions currently in place.

“But the only way that we can do this is to do it together but apart. Together apart,” Sherwin said.

Sherwin has completely reinvented the Haggadah, the text recited at Passover Seder. In its place she’s prepared a Corona Haggadah, titling it “Gam Zeh Y’avor—This, too shall pass.”

Sixty members tuned in for the last Shabbat service via Zoom and she’s expecting more to tune in for the Passover Seder.

“We’re expecting a lot of people to tune in—people are desperate right now,” she said.

Claudie Goldstein dropped off Matzah at many of the members’ homes on Wednesday. But, still, many of the members are finding it hard to come up with traditional Passover foods, all of which symbolize parts of the Passover story.

Enid Rawlings, for instance, was unable to find matzah and other foods she needed for her family’s Passover meal on the one trip to the supermarket that she allocated herself this week.

That’s okay, said Sherwin.

“We make do with what we can get. If you can’t get a lamb shank bone to represent the sacrificial lamb, maybe you can get a chicken bone. If you can’t get a chicken bone, maybe you can get a milk bone. It’s okay.”

Marty and Mila Lyon live just a mile as the crow flies from their son, daughter-in-law and grandson. But they spent Wednesday night—the first night of Passover—observing the seder with their son’s family on laptop.

 “It’s kind of like having them at our table,” said Mila Lyon.

Mila prepared a care package for the kids that contained favorite Passover dishes, such as Gefilte fish, matzah ball soup, chopped liver, macaroons and peach preserves made from Marty’s great-great grandmother’s recipe.

She will fix a seder plate tonight with other traditional foods, such as an apple-nut charoset that recalls the mud the Israelites used to make adobe bricks while enslaved.

With it in hand, they will join the online interactive community seder using Zoom tonight.

Greg and Enid Rawlings have always been faithful attendees of the community seder. But they have elected to share tonight’s seder with their two children, who came home from the East Coast when the coronavirus spread shut down their work and college.

“It will definitely be isolating, lonely and quiet. And we’ll focus more inward. But it will be nice to celebrate it with our children,” Enid said.

Others will not be so lucky. For them this Passover will be marked by the loss of a loved one.

 The Wood River Jewish Community has been gravely affected by the virus. One of its members who lived in Ketchum died of COVID-19 on Sunday. Others’ relatives have died alone at their homes in Florida and elsewhere without their children or grandchildren at their side.

And Sherwin fears there may be more such deaths before this is over.

“I’ve been doing very important prayers for the end of life on Skype and Zoom and FaceTime for people in hospitals,” she said. “I’m so incredibly sad that I can’t be there to hold anybody’s hand.”

But she’s doing what she can. She spent Wednesday morning sharing Passover online with a friend in Haifa, Israel. Then she delivered Passover food to six housebound seniors.

Afterwards, there were numerous interviews she was asked to do with PBS and others.

“Everybody wants to talk to me because I’m the rabbi of Sun Valley. And Sun Valley is a very dangerous place to be right now,” she said.

But come tonight she’ll be focused on the Passover and the lessons it contains that not even the coronavirus can erase.

“The Exodus and Passover story are the most fundamental lessons in our history as they created Judaism,” she said. “Without Passover, without the Exodus, without redemption we would not be the Jewish people. We were slaves for 400 years without hope. But because of the Exodus and the Passover we were able to create a society based on compassion. We were able to become God’s partners in making a better world.”

The coronavirus is not the same kind of plague as one of the plagues in the story of the Passover, she says.

"God is not found in the coronavirus, and it is not God's doing. But God is found in the way we respond to the virus through the kindness we show each other, through the excellent selfless care of our first responders and doctors, nurses, orderlies and other in the health field. We ask to be God's partners and embrace the change that should come from the lessons we are learning."