The first time I was supposed to go to Puerto Rico, I never made it. I was scheduled to attend a Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association conference there just as COVID began to spread. The conference was canceled, the world shut down, and Puerto Rico, like so many already-marginalized places, slipped once again from the national imagination.
I was determined to get there.
A few years later, last year actually, I planned a New Year’s trip. I arrived on December 30th, took in a little beauty, and then, at around 4 a.m. on December 31st, the power grid failed. The island went dark.
