One High Holy Day prayer, playing on the homophony of the Hebrew words for “end” and “begin,” reads, “The year has ended [tikhlah] along with its curses; let a year begin [teḥel] along with its blessings.” Without a doubt, the pandemic has been among the year’s curses, and most Israelis feel the same about the recent announcement that there will be yet another election in March. But Ruthie Blum notes that this year has had many blessings for the Jewish state as well:
Working our way backwards can provide a bit of perspective. Let’s start with December. On December 9, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was at Ben-Gurion Airport welcoming the arrival of a plane bearing the first shipment of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine. This was the culmination of a $237.5 million deal that he had inked in November with the pharmaceutical giant, for the purchase of eight million doses, sufficient to inoculate nearly half the country’s population. This batch is only the beginning. The prime minister also signed a deal with Moderna for six million doses, enough to vaccinate another three million Israelis. Meanwhile, Israel’s own Institute for Biological Research vaccine, BriLife, is in the midst of advanced clinical trials.
Earlier in the month, on December 3, Netanyahu greeted 316 Ethiopian immigrants who arrived as part of “Operation Tzur Israel” (“Rock of Israel”), to bring the approximately 2,000 others slated to make aliyah by the end of January. On December 10, Morocco agreed to establish diplomatic relations with Israel. Two days later, Bhutan jumped on the bandwagon.
On June 10, a “Group Aliyah Flight” landed in Israel, bringing 51 new immigrants from North America, many of whom said that the pandemic had sparked their final decision to make the move—one they’d been contemplating for a while. And that followed a 100-percent increase in May, compared to the same month in 2019, in the interest expressed by other U.S. Jews to make Israel their home. But May saw new immigrants arrive from Ethiopia (119), Ukraine (111), and Russia (41).
Read more on Jerusalem Post: https://www.jpost.com/opinion/2020-hindsight-israels-year-in-review-653213