Last year, I hosted Seder for the first time ever. I had family and friends over to celebrate in my own home, which I had purchased only a few months before. I was not in great health, but I’d already started down the warpath to wellness and I was determined to pray with and feed some of my loved ones for just one night.

My grandfather had passed away only weeks before and my family was heartbroken and suffering. Although we have never openly embraced the concept of God, nor have we ever, to any degree, embraced formal religion (we’re what you’d call traditional or cultural people), the Haggadah that I used for last year’s Seder had an awful lot of “God talk” in it. In fact, it was remarkably God-heavy for something called “the Haggadah of Liberation” and for being peppered with illustrations stolen from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass.

Somehow, despite our family culture, it was comforting. The God talk still made me uncomfortable, but the concept behind it–the idea of a power beyond our ability to reason that was benevolent and cared for us–that was comforting.

It was a very emotional celebration, but it brought comfort and reassurance when we all very much needed it. Passover is a holiday that celebrates faith: trusting something that you cannot possibly understand–God. Believing that you and your people will survive, that the hardship will lessen, that you will one day flourish, that God will provide.

When we are mourning, we must trust that it will get better. We must believe that one day it will hurt a little bit less. That we will again be able to smile, to laugh, to feel happiness. We must believe that our departed loved one is in a better place, that they are free of pain, that they are comfortable and at rest. We must believe without knowing. That’s faith, right?

This year, Passover will take on special significance again. We are enduring a new plague. The hardest hit will be the folks with jobs in service of others. To survive, we must act collectively. Stay home. Care for one another by staying home. Stay home. Stay home. Stay home.

While the Hebrews, enslaved in ancient Egypt, had to GTFO in hurry, we all have to shelter in place. But, it’s not that different! This is about collective, cooperative action. This is about following the directions you are given to ensure your survival and the survival of your people. Let staying home be our lamb’s blood. Let us undertake a collective action to do as we are instructed. Let the coronavirus pass over each of us.

This is not a one-at-a-time, at-your-own-convenience situation. This is ALL OF US TOGETHER. This is a the-sea-is-parted-and-we-best-haul-ass-at-once-all-together-if-we-want-to-survive kind of situation. Today, going to together to save ourselves means staying home. It’s a community pact to undertake the same action at the same time, the same commitment for the same length of time, the same consideration for one another until we are in the clear and safely delivered to the promised land.

Only through the collective action of a community can an entire people be saved. If you’re not about faith, that’s fine. Please be about common sense. Please be about logic. Please be about reason. Please be about kindness and empathy and patience. Please.

Also, the fact that yeast is sold out everywhere is hilarious and fitting and the appropriate timing of this with Passover, aka the Feast of Unleavened Bread, is absolutely not lost on me.

So I’m not hosting Seder this year. But I am dearly looking forward to the process of writing my own Haggadah. I think that I should allow and welcome the emotional conditions of our current global health crisis to influence and color the content.

I will prepare food. I will read my homemade Haggadah. I will set the Seder Plate and welcome Elijhah into my home, but nobody else.

I will eat. I will drink wine. I will pray. I will probably facetime my family.

And I will look forward to next year. When we are all safely delivered.