The Holocaust, by definition, as the topic of any conversation, never brings with it good news. The systematic murder of European Jewry was unspeakable while it was happening, and the passing decades have brought with it little comprehension or insight. It has never progressed beyond the unfathomable.

JEWS around the world can all count their Hebrew blessings that an attack on a Texas synagogue on Shabbat, in an 11-hour standoff with a maniacal Muslim gunman on January 15, did not result in the kind of gruesome catastrophe Jewish people have grown accustomed to for well 2,000 years. Maybe the Lone Star State is lucky for those who wear the Star of David.

There’s a film playing in movie houses in major cities across America, and let me tell you—It’s a scary one. The setting itself is ominous: a haunted courthouse, possessed not by zombies or dead people, but by no-shows and noncompliance, indifference and contempt for the law.

Just when we thought, foolishly, that it was safe to go outside—our lives slowly restored to normal, masks discarded, arms boosted, Broadway lights ablaze, children back in classrooms, nursing home patients breathing, and anti-vaxxers livid from all those mandates and restrictions—corona humbled us once again.