COVID hit, the city froze, but I found God’s grace

Five years ago today, I became a Christian.

There wasn’t much ceremony — a lovely Episcopal parish church in Brooklyn, just me and the priest. Save God himself, nobody else was there. COVID-19 had come to town.

‘Dovie,’ a friend texted me, ‘you might die. You need to get this done.’ He was not wrong.

Have you ever seen time stand still? It looks like something out of “The Flash”: You’re moving, slowly, but everything around you comes to a halt. Or it looks like the end of a zombie flick, with the streets bare save a few straggling survivors. It’s eerie.

Eerie is how I’d describe hearing the voicemail of one of my closest friends from college, saying goodbye. Eerie is how I’d describe visiting that friend in the psych ward after the suicide attempt thankfully failed. Your blood runs cold, and the wall between life and death becomes very porous indeed.

You see Hades in those moments. But I saw something else: God, Jesus Christ, calling me to come to a new home. His home. The church.

I began to go to an Episcopal church in Brooklyn that a close friend of mine had recommended to me. I’d visited churches before, to enjoy the music and community. But before 2019, becoming a parishioner, becoming a Christian, that was never going to happen.

Former Orthodox Jews don’t become Christians. That’s no knock on the People of the Book — Christ and the apostles were Jews, as were some great saints. But if a Jewish fellow today wants to be edgy, he becomes an atheist. If he wants to believe in something, he becomes a Buddhist. Christianity is, generally, off the cultural radar.

But who was I to say no? A vague belief in a higher power wasn’t the God I was beginning to know and love again in a new way. My time at the church, going to services every Sunday, started to burn faith into my soul like a cattle brand. After several months, I spoke with the rector, and we decided on an Easter baptism. Then, COVID-19 hit.

“Dovie,” a friend texted me, “you might die. You need to get this done.” Blunt as he was, that’s not wrong. My disability doesn’t just have me in a wheelchair — it significantly weakens my lungs. I’ve nearly died of pneumonia a few times.

I texted the pastor, and he agreed that on Sunday, March 22, 2020, I would be baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And so it was. At the appointed time, I wheeled into the small side chapel, and after an hour or so, came out a Christian.

That evening, the governor of New York put the city under a stay-at-home order. The next day, I woke up with a bad case of COVID-19. The world hurt; the city was still. But I was alive, and I was in his grace.

Two years later, I’d be confirmed as a Roman Catholic, and I’d truly be home. But that’s a story for another day.