I usually break my fast after Yom Kippur with a glass of orange juice. After 25 hours of deprivation, it’s always surprising to me how a little juice can so quickly ease the gnawing hunger and thirst. Still, I eat and drink much more, partially because there’s no longer any restriction, but also because there’s a sense that I, like all who have fasted, have earned it. We’ve suffered; we’ve atoned — we’re off the hook until the next fast.

But that’s not really the point.

On Yom Kippur, we’re not fasting to “earn” our break-fast or as a quick fix to wipe away past wrongs. Rather, we’re commanded to experience hunger and other deprivations in order to humble ourselves before God, expose our own limitations and vulnerability, and become more attuned to the needs of others. Stripped of food, water, intimacy — we’re given the time and space to ask: what do we really need? Have we struck the right balance in our daily life between what we take and what we give? In how we engage with God and with each other?

Covid has had a similar rebalancing effect. These days of universal deprivation — an ongoing Yom Kippur of sorts — have left us unable to do many things we’ve always taken for granted. Through our limitations, we’ve become more conscious of what really matters: our health and the health of our loved ones. A grandparent’s hug. A holiday table filled with family and friends.

And we’ve become more aware of the inequity and hardship that others suffer. Those who pre-pandemic were on the precipice of poverty have even less now. The elderly and Holocaust survivors who were lonely before are even more so now.

We’ve also discovered greater humility — none of us truly knows how long this will last or what life will be like in the future. This shared sense of uncertainty has opened us to opportunities to come together, despite our differences, in ways we haven’t often enough.

Six months in and counting, the pandemic — like fasting on Yom Kippur — has equipped us with newfound humility, civility, and purpose.

I stress these qualities in particular because they’ve become part of the national conversation this week. As America mourns the loss of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, she is remembered for a lifetime of extraordinary achievement, for breaking barriers, for being the first Jewish woman on the Supreme Court, and now for being the first woman and the first Jewish person to lie in state at the Capitol. But what also distinguished Justice Ginsburg was her humility and civility, her willingness to listen to the “other side,” knowing that nobody has a monopoly on truth. The genuine friendship Justice Ginsburg enjoyed with the late Justice Antonin Scalia, an ideological foe, feels inconceivable in the world we live in today. Though renowned for her powerful dissents, the respect she exhibited for those with whom she disagreed is an equal part of her enduring legacy.

May Justice Ginsburg’s memory be an inspiration to our community and to America.

And may our fasts this year, especially in this time of pandemic, be even more meaningful, a chance to rebalance and find new purpose.

Shabbat shalom and g’mar chatimah tovah