Since childhood, Friday night dinner has held a special place in my week. My mother lit candles and set the table with an embroidered cloth and pink china. My father recited blessings over a silver kiddush cup filled with wine and an ornate oval plate that held the challah.

Meghann Hennen, a Jewish preschool teacher based in Cleveland, OH, discovered challah's incredible impact on her life firsthand when she decided to start her own challah business on Instagram... in the midst of the pandemic.

Friday’s sunset could be no different than Thursday’s, a time marker notching off another day or another week, but Shabbat requires us to mark a more substantial difference,  Regularity is key to keep track of our lives between other Jewish times and when days blur into each other.

Even as structure and routine begin to crumble, ritual observances don’t stop for the virus. As did many generations of Jews before us, we must adapt ritual to this unprecedented way of life, and Shabbat services, a mainstay for nursing home residents, necessitated creative adaptation.

There is some small comfort in the fact that Jewish ritual offers many ways to mark life’s significant moments and to acknowledge the complicated mix of feelings that may accompany them. Here are some ideas to get you thinking.

Earlier this month, I joined a Virginia synagogue's virtual Shabbat services, led by its youth group teens. Afterward, I composed and sent an email to the congregation’s cantors to tell them how touched I was by the service and to express my sincere gratitude to them.

Just as each of us goes through a process of self-examination during the Days of Repentence in Tishrei, this week is an opportunity to do so on a collective and national level.

The Book of Proverbs instructs us to “speak up for those who cannot speak...to raise our voices on behalf of the vulnerable and downtrodden.” (Proverbs 31:8-9). The individuals who make up America’s prison population are isolated, vulnerable, and voiceless.

As challenging as these days of quarantine have been, I take comfort in the many ways this strange time of separation have enabled us – however ironically – to come together. Here are a few of the “blessings of separation” I’ve experienced in the age of COVID-19.