Alone Together on Dan Street

Breathtaking and powerful. Shows the universality of the quarantine experience.

--Heidi Rabinowitz and Susan Kusel, The Book of Life Podcast

A lovely story of how a little girl in Jerusalem turns the challenge of Corona Virus into an opportunity for community and song. It offers a wonderful way to reflect on how we can be our best when we think of others and come together.

--Dr. Rona Milch Novick, Dean of the Azrieli School at Yeshiva University and author of Mommy, Can You Stop the Rain?

We come back to the very recent past in Alone Together on Dan Street, in which Erica Lyons gives a hopeful but not sugarcoated retelling of the first spring and Passover of the pandemic. While people in New York City banged on pots with their windows open daily at 7 p.m. and Italians sang out their windows, Israelis moved their Seders on to their balconies so that anyone who lived alone could have a Seder surrounded by other voices. Lyons captures the monotony and claustrophobia of those early days of the pandemic perfectly, in recounting the story of Mira: "[n]ow the days were all mixed up … [a]nd seasons were only things that happened on the balcony. Every picture [Mira] drew was of the same building across the street." She also juxtaposes the fact that, while for people who lived by themselves, the pandemic was especially isolating, for those who lived with families in small apartments, it could, somewhat ironically, be hard to find a place to be alone. A lovely reminder of how the pandemic that separated us also brought us together.

--Rachel Fremmer, Tablet Magazine