Sergey Kadinsky

When highways across the city have electronic signs with messages urging the public to stay home, Zev Nirenberg rushes from Kew Gardens Hills to his office in Brooklyn. He looks at the other drivers on the road and wonders how many of them are essential workers with occupations directly connected to combating the coronavirus pandemic. “Where are they going?” he asks. “What are they doing?”

Mazal Tov! It’s a boy! The nurses welcomed a boy to Michael and Chipper Perlman this past Chol HaMoed Pesach at NewYork-Presbyterian Queens, and within 48 hours the mother and newborn were at their home in Kew Gardens Hills. With a global pandemic stretching thin the resources of hospitals, being home is the safest place to be. “Avoid the ambulance, drive to the hospital yourself,” Michael Perlman said. “The waiting room was empty as they tried to keep as few people there as possible.”

 The silence of this past Monday night in Kew Gardens Hills seemed like an ideal opportunity for burglars to make their way through the neighborhood in search of loot. The homes on 73^rd Avenue near 147^th Street seemed particularly affluent, with only a short wall or fence separating the sidewalk from the private property. “They started behind the property trying to break into homes and then ended on my property. I heard noise in my yard and my wife saw suspicious guys on camera,” homeowner Ari Fozailow said. The footage records the trespassing shortly after 1 a.m. “She yelled to me that someone is in our yard. I pulled out my gun and you can see the rest on video.”

 At the time that this article went to press, the number of individuals infected by COVID-19 has not diminished. Our streets are quiet, but inside each hospital the scene is reminiscent of a humanitarian crisis, with a shortage of supplies and medical professionals leaving the front line of this health criis after coming down with the same illness as their patients. The air outdoors feels cleaner as there are fewer vehicles on the city’s roads. Our streets are quiet enough that one does not hear any honking, cars with loud bass, or screeching tires. The silence is pierced by ambulance sirens, with a frequency that rivals that of airplanes that used to fly above our neighborhoods on any given day.

 In the past two weeks my household adjusted to the pressure of at-home work and schooling with the natural desire to spend at least a few minutes outdoors. The parks are open, and in the more densely populated neighborhoods there seems to be hardly any enforcement in reducing the number of park goers and dispersing people playing sports in teams. If one is mindful of social distancing and avoiding heavily touched surfaces, then the limits of “stay at home” can be expanded to allow for some breathing space.

Outdoors

 My daughter’s first Zoom class each day begins at 9:30am, which is usually three hours after she wakes up. In that timeframe, she had eaten her breakfast and had at least an hour to be outside, with the fresh air giving her the energy to pay attention to three online classes that she will be having that day, in addition to playing nicely with her younger brother, and not distrubing either parent who is working on their laptops. I also take them out in the late afternoon so that they would have the appetite for dinner and fall asleep in a good mood.

 I take my children out early before public outdoor spaces receive too many visitors and increase the risk of spreding the virus. We avoid playgrounds and restrooms, where the virus sits on surfaces used by children who inevitably touch each other, their family members, and their faces. Here are our favorite early morning outdoor spaces within ten minutes of Main Street that could work for Chol Hamoed and throughout the duration of this quarantine:

 Forest Park: In particular the Pine Grove at Park Lane South and Myrtle Avenue. In the morning the surface of the forest is covered with dew and there’s a fresh smell to the pines in this section of the park. One can imagine the pine barrens of southern New Jersey and eastern Long Island. To me they’re reminiscent of the thick forests of Latvia, my birthplace.

 Cunningham Park: Sizable sports fields along 73rd Avenue that are ideal for kicking a ball, tossing a frisbee, or flying a kite. Behind the fields is a forest for some contrast, where we hike for a bit before returning home.

 Alley Pond Park: at nearly 650 acres, plenty of room here for social distancing. The hiking trails lead to freshwater wetlands and ponds where one can hear birds and frogs without leaving the city. Unfortunately as more people take to this park’s forest, I look at the parking lot and if there are too many cars, then forget it. Go back home!

 Vanderbilt Motor Parkway: This linear park connects Cunningham and Alley Pond parks using a bike path that was once the country’s first highway. If you’re asking whether a linear park offers enough space for social distancing, it depends on how many people are using the park. That’s why the High Line in Manhattan was closed out of an “abundance of caution.” But this is eastern Queens, where many residents have their own backyards for outdoor enjoyment. The soaring trees along this route have the look of nature’s cathedral. There are no benches in this park.

 I am not sure whether Flushing Meadows Corona Park deserves a place on this list as my recent visits experienced enough bikers, joggers, and other families here to make me turn back at the park’s entrance. If you see more people here than you would like, please stay away.

 Your Front Porch: your children’s interest in crayons, color pencils, and paint may eventually wear out as this quarantine continues. Before they vandalize your living room walls, perhaps a bucket of chalk for the front porch, driveway, or sidewalk is the solution. Make the experience educational, inspiring, and Instagrammable!

Virtual Tourism:

 With the city’s cultural institutions closed, their online presence offers virtual tours with panoramic camera views and detailed descriptions of the works on display.

 Google Arts & Culture is the platform where more than 400 museums have posted images and descrptions of their artworks. Local participants include the Metropolitan Museum, Museum of Modern Art, Guggenheim Museum, Whitney Museum, Frick Collection, American Museum of Natural History, and Brooklyn Museum, among others.

 Parks at Home If one cannot go to the nearest park out of an abundance of caution, the media team at the city’s Parks Department brings the outdoor experience to your screen with calm meditation videos of park landscapes, tours of parks fiven by rangers, and vitural walks through selected parks. www.nycgovparks.org/highlights/parks-at-home 

 The Extended Family. For many of our readers the holiday week is a time to reconnect with extended family either at our homes, their homes, or at a hotel resort. Now more than ever, our older family members need to hear from us. Some of the Pesach hotel musicians and lecturers will be delivering their performances online to uplift our spirits, but if your children can sing to their aunts, uncles, and grandparents using FaceTime or Skype, it would probably be more valuable than the headline entertainer of the cancelled Pesach resort.

 My 90-year-old aunt cannot have enough photos of and videos of my children to cheer her up. Likewise for my 74-year-old uncle in Israel who speaks with us via Skype. As long as the postal service is operating, double your effort with physical mail in the form of letters, drawings, and Pesach recipes.

 The entire world is experiencing this virus and we’ve spoken to family members and friends across the country, Canada, Belarus, Russia, Latvia, and Israel. In the midst of despair, not knowing when our normal daily lives will resume, we have each other.

BY SERGEY KADINSKY

The week following Pesach has been one of optimism: As fewer sirens are heard on the streets and the number of infected individuals has diminished, the return to normal life is expected to unroll gradually. At the least with the city’s public schools closed through the end of June, other public venues such as libraries and museums are also not expected to reopen in the first month of the summer.

This past Monday, Mayor Bill de Blasio confirmed that all parades for that month are cancelled to keep people from violating social distancing guidelines. “They will be back, and we will find the right way to do it,” he said. “That joy and that pride that all of these events bring will be back.”

The nation’s largest pro-Israel gathering involves months of preparations by schools, synagogues, and nonprofit organizations. The elaborate floats and banners are among the highlights of the year for Queens institutions including Yeshiva of Central Queens, Yeshiva Har Torah, and the YU High School for Girls. With online learning underway, the students will celebrate Israel in their homes.

In the midst of the pandemic there are certain news items that Israel supporters can take to heart. In Great Britain, the Labour Party recently elected former prosecutor Keir Starmer as its leader, succeeding outspoken anti-Israel firebrand Jeremy Corbin. While his predecessor played down allegations of anti-Semitism within his party, Starmer described himself as a Zionist. His wife is Jewish and active on the communal scene.

Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis received a personal phone call from Starmer on Yom HaShoah apologizing for his party’s past dismissals of anti-Semitism allegations and a promise to investigate such charges independently. “I welcomed hearing directly of his commitment to take the necessary action to root out anti-Semitism from the Labour Party as a top priority,” Rabbi Mirvis tweeted. “It is heartening that the task of rebuilding the Jewish community’s trust in the Labour Party has begun.”

In this country, presidential candidate Bernie Sanders suspended his Democratic Primary campaign in favor of former Vice President Joe Biden. Although a critic of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Biden is a moderate in comparison to Sanders, who included outspoken BDS activists on his campaign.

In Israel, the deadlock of the past three elections within a year was resolved with Blue and White faction leader Benny Gantz joining incumbent Netanyahu in a power-sharing deal. Concerning the pandemic, the low death toll in Israel, strict social distancing guidelines, and medical research on the coronavirus are monitored by other countries as examples of how to effectively combat the spread of this plague.

It is too soon to tell if the cure for COVID-19 will come from Zion, but if it does, the next Celebrate Israel Parade will be a celebration not only for supporters of the Jewish state, but for the entire world.

By Sergey Kadinsky

At the time that this article went to press, the number of individuals infected by COVID-19 has not diminished. Our streets are quiet, but inside each hospital the scene is reminiscent of a humanitarian crisis, with a shortage of supplies and medical professionals leaving the front line of this health crisis after coming down with the same illness as their patients. The air outdoors feels cleaner, as there are fewer vehicles on the city’s roads. Our streets are quiet enough that one does not hear any honking, cars with loud bass, or screeching tires. The silence is pierced by ambulance sirens, with a frequency that rivals that of airplanes that used to fly above our neighborhoods on any given day.