“Alone, Together” Part VI – Six Feet (Under)

Back in 1992, a twenty-four-year-old author from Tel Aviv – a guy by the name of Etgar Keret – was about to publish his very first collection of short stories. Desperately, trying to come up with the text for the blurb on the book’s back cover, Etgar felt stumped. And then, in the most unlikely of places – Ichilov Hospital’s ER – he finally found the words and jotted them down on a discarded prescription pad. Mishy Harman talks to Keret about the ways in which breathing, or rather not breathing, have shaped him as a writer. We also hear from Dr. Asher Salmon, the head of international relations for Israel’s Ministry of Health, about how Israel became the victim of its own success in combating the virus.

Despite the fear associated with having a serious underlying condition, the pandemic has been an extremely fruitful period for Etgar Keret. He has written more ferociously than he has in decades, he says. And today we get a first peek at his new piece of nonfiction. For years, Keret has been unsuccessfully trying to imagine his own demise. Then came the coronavirus and sorted it all out. Now, he can close his eyes at night and easily visualize himself being rushed to the hospital with severe respiratory distress. But what does that final experience feel like? And what does he absolutely not want to see in his dying moments? Actor Ishai Golan reads Keret’s latest story, published here for the first time.

In addition to everything else, COVID-19 has changed the ways in which we say goodbye to loved ones. Virtual funerals are strange, really. After all, so much of how we grieve is about being together physically – hugging, supporting, touching. But there is also an unexpected beauty to them. Zoom, YouTube, Facebook Live and other platforms give us the opportunity to participate in funerals around the world, many of which we wouldn’t otherwise have attended. They allow us to create global communities that come together to say farewell. Over the last few months, Yochai Maital has been collecting sound from recorded online funerals. Some are of public figures like Israel’s former chief rabbi, Eliyahu Bakshi-Doron, who died of COVID-19 in April. Others are of private people, who agreed to let us share their intimate and painful moments of loss. The audio collage is made up of Jewish, Muslim, and Christian funerals. Religious ones and secular ones. Services in Hebrew, Arabic, and English. And in all those languages, what we hear is the raw emotion of people trying to figure out how to say goodbye from a distance.