It seems to me my daughter Vera and I were among the first people to enter self-isolation when the pandemic began in March of 2020. We just came back from France, and four days later, it was announced that France was among the “high-risk” countries. Vera was about four years old back then. I panicked. She was a very active toddler. How could she be locked up indoors for 10 days? Besides, there was a Purim party at her daycare during this period. She was looking forward to it so much! And I bought her an amazing fairy costume! And what about my husband? How should he isolate himself from the two of us, in the same apartment? And my mom? She lives just a couple of streets away from our house, and she is used to coming to be with Vera every day! And Vera is used to seeing her grandma every day!

Fuck!

As all these thoughts were running inside my head, I was commissioned to make a series of drawings about self-isolation for the Calcalist newspaper (I was crying a lot on social media, and the editor saw it and got the idea for it.) Now, these images are reissued for this special issue of Politics of Love for Tohu Magazine.

1) The first image depicts me trying to sleep, and Vera is jumping on my back. Well, every mother of a toddler would understand how I felt.

2) My mom worried about us and brought us whatever food she cooked. She put it in front of our door, rang the bell and ran away. We would come out and chat a little bit on the staircase.

3) Being locked up in the house, Vera used to look from the window at the huge hot air balloon flying above the park, probably feeling like the Israeli Anne Frank.

4) We’ve decided to celebrate Purim no matter what. Vera wore her costume, and we had a party. Actually, censorship was applied to this image. In reality, my husband Sunny participated in our party despite our attempt to isolate ourselves. We failed to keep the isolation to celebrate Purim, but for the magazine, I’ve made another “correct” version of this drawing.

 Here is the one which shows how we celebrated Purim at home, failing to isolate ourselves from my husband.