I write this sitting in a Hilton Rochester hotel room in what is known as “Med City,” Rochester, Minnesota. My wife Susie and I have been in this same room since February 10 when we arrived to enter the world-famous Mayo Clinic kidney transplant center. That amounts to more than 90 days, isolated from most family and friends. We were sheltering-in-place for weeks before the rest of the world, living like John and Yoko during their “bed-in” protest for peace at the Hilton Amsterdam in 1969.

The good...scratch that...the great news is that Susie’s new kidney - she named it “Sydney” - is working magnificently. When we arrived here, her function was around 13%. It is now 75%. Twice as good as mine. I donated my “spare” to a lovely woman in Florida, whose husband is a Southern Baptist minister who studied at seminary with my friend Pastor Rick Warren, and who, after Googling me, wrote in an email: “I feel so blessed to have a Jewish kidney!”

So, for the most part, we have been alone all this time. Yet, here’s the thing. We are hardly “alone.” We are surrounded daily by our kids and grandkids, our cousins, our friends, and our colleagues who call, who write, who send, who never let a day go by without letting us know how much they care for and love us. Much of this contact has come through the amazing CaringBridge platform where they see daily updates on our progress. We have come to depend on these virtual connections that lift our spirits. We have been alone....together.

Who knew that the entire Jewish world would learn this same lesson, simultaneously, across denominations and heretofore impermeable institutional borders?