Alone Together on Dan Street

Reviews / Votes

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