On Passover eve, as Israel prepares to celebrate the Festival of Freedom and our people's deliverance from bondage in Egypt, we also celebrate our liberation from the coronavirus. The State of Israel is the first in the world to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
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It's unbelievable that at this time last year, we were in the midst of the first wave of the pandemic, shuttered in our homes. At the time, even just saying "we overcame pharaoh, we will overcome this as well," was perceived as detached from reality.
Yet here we are, thanks to the extraordinary combination of the Israeli government importing enough vaccines, a public health system with rare capabilities, and the majority of the public answering the bell to get vaccinated – for the first time since the outbreak of the pandemic we are seeing a consistent drop in the reproduction rate, percentage of positive tests and the number of patients in serious condition in our hospitals. Not to mention the further opening of our schools, cultural events and businesses.
Israel's recovery is particularly conspicuous amid the backdrop of the current situation in Europe, which is dealing with a vaccine shortage, a public disinterested in getting vaccinated, spiking morbidity rates, lockdowns and protests.
This is also the time to reopen the country's borders to all Israelis.
The leadership must unite the tribes
Earlier this week, the High Court ruled that the restrictions the government imposed on entering and exiting the country were unconstitutional. This is a welcome decision. Israel can bring home its citizens from across the globe when they need help. Now, too, as an ethical matter of the highest order, the country must not close its gates to its citizens. I have no doubt the country can open its borders in a responsible fashion while enforcing quarantines on arrivals. The country is presently improving its long-term capabilities. While Europe is just now considering nationalizing vaccine manufacturing plants, Israel has already taken the first step to building an independent vaccine factory that will be licensed by pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer.
This year, when we sit around the seder table with our slightly more expanded family, compared to last year, we will acknowledge the changes in our lives – for better and worse. This year, we learned to appreciate the small things we used to take for granted, for example, meeting and hugging our elderly parents or being free to move and travel. We learned the importance of unity between the various tribes. It's not for nothing that the Jewish people were already split into tribes during the exodus from Egypt. From then to now, our tribes have always been capable of overcoming divisions when it mattered most.
The person elected to lead this country will have to unite the tribes of Israel under one umbrella, in the vein of Moses and Aaron. This year we relearned the importance of education and the central role teachers play in society. In the first century CE, when education was only accessible to the very few, the children of Israel were the first to be obligated to learn to read and write. Today, more than 24% of Nobel Prize winners are Jewish, which is notable in comparison to their minuscule percentage of the global population – 0.2%.
We have many reasons to give thanks and blessings this holiday, including special gratitude for the medical teams fighting even now to save the lives of their seriously ill patients. We also offer our condolences to the families who lost their loved ones. This is also the time, now more than ever, to remember that if we are united, no force in the world can defeat us.
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