This, too, shall pass.

It may take some time, it will only be after the death rate around the world climbs, it will necessitate inconvenient changes to all our lives, but at a certain time – thanks to the discovery of a vaccine or perhaps with the help of a warm, humid summer – the coronavirus will disappear.

Until then, however, what we are witnessing is a fundamental change to our lives. Everything we are used to – social contact, travel, school, work, prayer – has been upended.

Beyond that, it also hovers like a heavy cloud over everything. Our moods are affected by it, conversations dominated by it, even dreams – both the ones we have when we sleep and the ones we have for ourselves and our children – have been interrupted by it.

Israel is a country that has dealt with crisis in the past, and in that sense its citizens are prepared for the restrictions being demanded of them better than citizens of most other Western countries who have not faced this type of emergency – these type of Draconian restrictions – since World War II.

Not here. To a certain extent, the mood today is reminiscent of the First Gulf War in 1991, when Saddam Hussein fired Scuds at Israel and the country taped its windows shut, walked around with gas masks at the ready and kept children home from preschools and schools.

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