Written for the Jewish Voice for Peace National Membership Meeting, 2025
(*Note: I’m using the word “God” loosely. Your mileage my vary. Project what you want.)
Blessed is God who blesses the mask that covers this beautiful Jewish face.
Blessed is God who blesses the mask that covers yours, and allows us to connect with each other without infecting each other.
Blessed is God who blesses the healthy people who do not fear for their own wellbeing, but who wear their mask anyway, to protect the more vulnerable.
Blessed is God who blesses the people who are healthy today, but who wear their mask because they know that a single Covid infection could result in Long Covid.
Blessed is God who blesses people who have Long Covid, who must grapple with life-changing—and sometimes life-destroying—illness, while the world that should be supporting them often treats them as though they do not exist at all.
Blessed is God who blesses those who feel the urge to pull down their mask to talk or cough, but who resist that urge!
Blessed is God who blesses those who dislike wearing masks because they have difficulty projecting their voice through the veil.
Blessed is God who blesses those who help the quiet to be heard, by passing them a microphone, or finding other ways to amplify a voice that deserves an audience.
Blessed is God who blesses those who are challenged in masked spaces, because they cannot hear people whose mouths they cannot see.
Blessed is God who blesses sick and disabled people whose access needs often clash with each other, but who find creative ways to communicate, and in that creativity, manifest a world of possibility and hope.
Blessed is God who blesses the sick, blesses their insights, their wisdom, their visions, their gifts to humanity, whether or not those gifts are honored or acknowledged.
Blessed is God who blesses the sick and disabled of Palestine, whose numbers have grown exponentially throughout this hideous genocide.
Blessed is God who blesses those who wear a mask to protest genocide without being doxxed.
Blessed is God who blesses those whose suffering is ignored because it is inconvenient suffering, whose lives are ignored because they have inconvenient lives, whose deaths are ignored because they are inconvenient deaths.
Blessed is God who blesses those who weather inconvenience to champion life, who wrangle inconvenience to protect life, who defy inconvenience to defend life.
Blessed is God who blesses this mask that conceals my face from you, but reveals to you who I am.
Blessed is God who blesses this overwhelming universe, that gives us inconceivable beauty, and challenges us to fight for justice through an ongoing onslaught of obstacles and opportunities.
