Photo Credit: Jewish Press
“The measure of good,” say our Sages, “is greater than the measure of affliction.” Meaning that whenever we encounter a negative phenomenon, there is a corresponding positive phenomenon that mirrors it in which the negative thing’s traits are magnified many times over.
What would be the characteristics of a corresponding “measure of good” to the Covid virus?
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- It doesn’t require intimate contact, prolonged involvement, or years of study for one who possesses it to pass it on to another. A fleeting encounter, the air of a shared space, suffices for one person to have a profound effect upon another.
- As it passes from one to another, it undergoes tiny – but very significant – mutations, adjusting itself to the particular characteristics of its new possessor, thereby compounding its effect and making it more resistant to eradication.
- Its impact is far-reaching and beyond all proportion to its quantity. It’s enough that a single person shows the merest symptoms for the entire region to become aware of and preoccupied with it.
- It focuses a tremendous amount of attention and resources on the minutest bits of matter, the tiniest of life-forms – and the slightest nuances thereof – recognizing that not size or mass is the measure of a thing, but what it does.
- It provokes widespread, even global, cooperation on the part of a great variety of people from all walks of life to answer the questions it poses and meet the challenges it raises.
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