Eco Sabbath
Mid-March, the world seemed to come to a dramatic halt. Planes stopped flying, borders closed, factories shut down, rush-hour traffic vanished. “What if you thought of it / as the Jews consider the Sabbath?” Lynn Ungar asked in her poem Pandemic. “Cease from travel. Cease from buying and selling / just for now,” she suggested. As humans have been forced into this time of extended Sabbath to avoid the spread of COVID-19, you might wonder whether the earth is getting a much-needed sabbath from us.