Notes on Moving to Israel in a Pandemic

It is by now a cliché to observe that COVID-19 is not the “great equalizer” it was once proclaimed to be. I’m not so sure.

As I checked in last month for my trip from JFK to Tel Aviv via London—I’d made a last-minute decision to fly to Israel, where, in part thanks to the global pandemic, I will stay for the foreseeable future—the agent gave me the bad news in a matter-of-fact tone. “There are no kosher meals available on this flight,” she announced. What about the connecting flight? I asked, panicked at the thought of going fifteen hours without a full meal. I detest airplane food and am prone to complain about it far more than the average flyer. Yet, in the time of the virus, I admit that eating a meal on an international flight is almost something to look forward to—a surreptitious excuse to remove one’s mask for just a few minutes of respite during an hours-long journey.

“No,” she said. “I’m afraid there are no kosher meals available for any passengers. There was a mistake in the ordering process.” I looked around me at the dozens of yeshiva bochurs and young families with children—the women dressed in black leggings with skirts over the top, the men bowing their black top-hats for check-in to reveal black velvet kippot underneath. “This flight is completely full,” the stewardess had informed me minutes earlier when I inquired about a window seat. A flight full of Orthodox Jews with no kosher food whatsoever. The ancient Israelites, wandering in the wilderness, had more plentiful provisions than British Airways on this particular evening. How would I—we—get through this journey?