As you know, we are all cooped up at home. School is canceled and we can’t ever go to the park. There is yellow caution tape across the entrances to our favorite two parks in Bergenfield. All the shuls have closed so there aren’t any groups on Shabbos. Zoom is way harder than school because you can’t even talk to your teacher until she finds you and unmutes you. And when you are unmuted, everyone else can hear you too, so I can’t have a private talk with my teachers who I love. I miss seeing them in person and going to recess at school with them and my classmates. I miss everyone in my class.
I miss my family members, like my cousin Yannay who goes to YU, who can’t spend Shabbos with us because he went home to his parents for Pesach and the rest of the school year. I miss my Grammy and my Omi, and I am worried for them. I don’t want them to catch this dangerous virus.
To me, the plague we are all living is like a cross between dever (sickness of the animals) and the schechin (boils). It’s a cross between them because it affects us all, it could kill us, and it’s very uncomfortable, like I think boils would be. It also makes people feel very scared. We are all affected so it is pretty crazy.
When the Jews were in Mitzrayim and the 10 makot were happening, even the Mitzrim who weren’t doing anything wrong could get hurt, like any of us can get hurt, no matter what we do. That’s why we have to stay home and try to do nothing.
That’s a reason why we take out some wine or grape juice from our cup during the seder night, because all the Mitzrim were hurt just because they were Mitzrim and we were prisoners in their land. They could not change who they were. The drops of juice means we still remember how the Mitzrim suffered.
When we hear that people are getting sick, sometimes we feel scared like it’s happening to us too. Some of us want to just climb into a hole and stay there until it’s over. But like every storm has an end, this will have an end too.
We should all daven for our sick friends and relatives, for a rafaenu for the whole world, so this will end soon.
Zippy Kratz, 9, is a third grader at The Moriah School. Her mom, Elizabeth Kratz, wrote an article last week that she read carefully, called “Living a Plague.” She liked it a lot but wanted to improve it, by writing a version for kids that explained her feelings.
By Tziporah “Zippy” Kratz
