Our synagogue, Congregation Shir Hadash, has a lay-led service (Shir Shabbat) on most Shabbat mornings from just after Simchat Torah until just before Shavuot, and Diane and I are regular attendees. And from time to time, we take a role in making the service happen. We’d volunteered to do that for today’s service, the last of the season – I would lead and she would chant Torah.

That, of course, was back in February. Things changed, but this morning, I led the service from home via Zoom and Diane chanted her portion (sadly, not from the Torah scroll, since we don’t have one at home); the Cantorial Soloist sang from her home. I was also projecting the prayer book from my Kindle app, and once or twice I forgot to scroll up because I was too busy listening, and I think I muted the Cantorial Soloist for a couple of seconds at one point, but things mostly went smoothly. I think. At least no lighting bolts descended from heaven!

This evening, we watched Silicon Valley Shakespeare’s presentation of Tales from the Edge of the Bard – ghost stories inspired by Shakespeare. It was a fun way to spend an hour; we’re going to watch the previous episodes in the series sometime.

The final payment for our July trip to Iceland is due this week. We have flights and hotels reserved, including visits to our son and my brother on our way home. There are a couple of days in Reykjavik before we get on a brand new Ponant ship, Le Bellot. And the tour operator says they’re planning to operate the trip. Iceland is even planning to ease restrictions on international travelers by mid-June.

We’re not going. Even if they get permission to sail, the flight from Portland to Reykjavik is currently not operating. It looks like the “eased restrictions” would give us the choice of proving we’re COVID-19-free on arrival or quarantining for 14 days (which is longer than the trip). And neither of us is ready to fly yet.

Luckily, the tour operator offered us the choice of moving our reservations to 2021 (or even 2022) at no penalty (in fact, they’ll give us a $300 credit) – it wasn’t a hard choice. We haven’t quite figured out what to do with the various airline tickets – we might get a refund from Icelandic if they don’t reinstate the flight from Portland before our scheduled departure, but all of our domestic flights are likely to operate, so we’ll have to settle for credits for those segments.

We’re still looking forward to seeing Iceland – just not yet.

Shabbat Shalom!