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Friday September 14, 2007

The holidays are here — so long, office!

by diane sussman

When Al Gore was running for president nearly eight wearying years ago, his stump stops included an appearance on “The David Letterman Show,” where the affable candidate delivered the Top 10 Rejected Gore-Lieberman Campaign Slogans. Among the better ones (drum roll) were No. 10: “Vote for me or I’ll come to your home and explain my 191-page economic plan to you in excruciating detail,” and No. 8: “Your vote automatically enters you in a drawing for the $123 billion budget surplus.”

But my favorite, no contest, was No. 7: “With Lieberman on the ticket, you get all kinds of fun new days off.”

Four months ago I came to work at j., and, with so many Jews on the premises (drum roll) I get all kinds of fun new days off, starting with Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Passover.

That’s not to say I didn’t take these days off before I came to j. — I did. It’s just that none of these holidays were ever given to me. I always had to ask for them, most of the time having to add a softener in the form of a mumbled, albeit insincere, apology, or a throw-away clause like, “I know it’s inconvenient, but … ”

Mostly these requests met with grudging approval. But there was one time when my perennially beleaguered boss looked up from her mound of paperwork and said, “Do you really have to take the day off? It’s really busy.”

It was all I could do to stop myself from saying, “Do you really have to take Christmas off? It would be a great time to get ahead with our work.”

Jewish holidays also always seemed to have some kind of concession attached to them — like losing a day’s pay, or subtracting a vacation day or holiday, or missing some crucial, team-building meeting (“Sorry, it was the only day that worked for everybody”). Other times I had to cover the work somehow, either by handing over a lesson plan or brokering a deal with a co-worker to cover an event or story.

If there weren’t arrangements on the front end, there were aftereffects on the back end: a passel of email, a clump of real mail, a slew of message slips, an accumulation of phone calls.

Whatever the inconvenience, though, I put up with it. I had long ago grown accustomed to the status of grateful minority.

Not that I was a model celebrant. Far from it. I have often fallen prey to that fuzzy combination of confusion and ignorance that comes from an over-booked life straddling two calendars — the kind of confusion that has you staring dumbly at tickets to Opening Day three days before Passover. I can’t even tell you how many times well-prepared friends have called and said, “Would you like to come to our house for a second night seder?” or “Would you be willing to pass out prayer books at Rosh Hashanah?”

“Yes!” I would always eagerly respond. “When is it?”

Working at j., however, has changed all that. I now see the holidays coming months in advance, not just because I have a Chabad calendar, but also because I’m not alone in tracking these things any more. Faster than (and before) I can say “When is it?” someone has asked me how I’m making my matzah balls, or if I have a good recipe for honey cake.

In short, for the first time, I have it together! Rosh Hashanah, Sept. 13-14; Fast of Gedaliah, Sept. 16; Yom Kippur, Sept. 22; Sukkot, Sept. 27-Oct. 2; Hoshana Rabbah, Oct. 3; Shemini Atzeret, Oct. 4, Simchat Torah, Oct. 5.

Stop me before I finish the century.

This called for a falafel! To celebrate, I decided to take the j. editorial women to lunch at Sabra Grill, a wonderful, glatt kosher, Israeli-run restaurant on the fringes of Chinatown. We picked our date. We studied the menu. We counted the days until our first women-only Jewish food outing. About a half-hour before lunch, just to be safe, I called for a table. But instead of the voice of the Israeli man who runs the place, I got their recording.

They were closed for a Jewish holiday.

Diane Sussman is the newswire editor at j. She can be reached at dsussman@jweekly.com.

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