Did my ragged broadcast schedule during the recent season of Jewish holidays (which ended officially on Saturday night, October 6th) reflect my medieval religious fundamentalism, Zionist fanaticism, or contempt for my secular career as a radio host and journalist?
Did I miss several days of media communication out of arrogant disregard for my audience or for the 200 stations that syndicate my show?
A bit of grumbling from some associates in the radio industry, as well as from a few loyal listeners and readers, deserves a candid and direct response.
For the record, in the four weeks between September 10th and October 5th, I missed a total of six days of broadcasting out of the twenty available weekdays; the other fourteen days I managed fourteen live broadcasts. In other words, the fiendishly demanding religious festival schedule still allowed me to broadcast, live, 70% of the time.
Of course, that’s still a lot of time off for religious observance – especially when the holidays involved bear complicated Hebrew names and sound utterly unfamiliar to the general public (including most Jews).
For anyone who’s interested, those festivals are all specifically mandated in the Bible, in Leviticus 23. If you look up the reference, you’ll see that God (or, if you prefer, “the Biblical authors”) used all 44 verses of this chapter to lay out the yearly holiday schedule for the Children of Israel. The autumnal observances include Rosh HaShanah (the Jewish New Year, which takes two days), Sukkot (the Feast of Tabernacles, another two days) and, finally, Shemini Atzeret/Simhat Torah (the “Eighth Day of Assembly and the Celebration of the Torah, the final two days). This year, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, happened to fall on a Saturday so it did not require a special day away from work.
For those of us who try to live our lives as observant Jews, these holiday observances aren’t optional, they’re mandatory: part of the solemn obligations that God placed on our people forever. Contrary to popular belief, the “chosen people” concept in Judaism doesn’t grant any special privileges to Jews but it does impose a serious burden of special responsibilities. If taking a day off from broadcasting to observe Shemini Atzeret makes me seem weird, different, out of the mainstream, then that’s part of the eternal idea: God wants us to be different, distinct, engaged actively and creatively in the world but at the same time set apart.
Though I wasn’t raised in a religiously rigorous home (you can read my book RIGHT TURNS – shameless plug – to find out all about it), I’ve observed our holiday schedule since I was in my late twenties –some thirty years now. It’s a matter of instinct at this point as well as commitment; it seems unthinkable to me to go in to work on Sukkot, no matter how much my associates may scratch their heads or mumble.
I know the term “holiday” conjures up images of relaxing on the beach, playing golf, touring theme parks with kids, or enjoying lavish dinners at swanky restaurants, but no such activities fit into the traditional Jewish festival program. The law dictates no transportation by car or bus or plane (or horse and wagon, for that matter), no talking on the phone, no turning on computers or radios or TV’s, no handling money (so no shopping of any kind), no going in to work even to check up on the progress of your guest host. The regimen of worship services is also intense: during this less than a month of festivals, I ended up walking a total of more than 55 miles covering the back-and-forth between our home and our synagogue (a distance of more than 2.5 miles each way). The festival meals are joyous (usually with guests as well as family) but also filling (with bread and wine each time) and, ultimately, exhausting.
During this particular holiday season, a friend asked what would have happened if I had simply decided to give up my observance this one time and gone in to broadcast my show. Did I believe that God would have taken the time or trouble to punish me for such a lapse?
The answer is – of course not. The Almighty, very clearly, has larger concerns and better things to do. The reason to adhere to traditional observance is not fear of divine wrath or punishment, but concern with departing from the pattern of living the Lord has specified for our benefit. The whole system of Jewish observance (yes, even including synagogue services that can last well in excess of three hours) has worked effectively for more than three thousand years, keeping our people together and dedicated through every imaginable persecution and challenge. I don’t expect God to enforce His system anymore than someone who follows Dr. Atkins’ diet expects the good doctor to enforce his system. If you depart from a regimen to which you’re committed, you don’t normally expect punishment, but you will still feel disappointment in yourself and miss some of the benefits you hoped to receive and achieve.
For me, the underlying value in Sabbath and holiday observance has always been a sense of perspective. When you liberate yourself from phones and e-mail and blogs and all the rest of it for a precisely prescribed period of time, you get a chance to consider where you’ve been, where you are, where you’re going. One popular explanation identifies the Sabbath and the festivals as mileposts in time – making you more conscious, more reflectively aware of the relentless progress through the course of another year. That’s particularly true of the cluster of fall holidays, which all convey to some extent the theme of stock-taking (measuring the harvest of your days in harvest season), along with emphasizing human vulnerability, and dependence on a higher power.
Above all, the timeless insistence on drawing aside from active, creative participation in the world for a few days a year provides precious lessons in the difference between the urgent and the important. The world of work is always urgent – especially for those of us who work in the breathless, ever-changing realm of media. But the universe of holidays and Sabbath counts as important—filled with family and friends and community, prayer and religious study, gratitude for our prodigious blessings, and conversation about issues and ideas that matter. The whole point is to remember the difference between, on the one hand, short-term demands and disasters that look significant only when viewed in the moment and, on the other hand, those values, practices, connections and commitments that will still seem deeply meaningful many years from now.
And regarding this sense of perspective, let me add one more thought about the “missed shows” of this holiday season: even with the demands of the Jewish calendar, I’m still confident that I give up fewer broadcast days than any other national radio host.
I don’t take vacations as they’re normally understood – even when we travel to Israel with 200 listeners, I make a point of broadcasting live from Jerusalem while I’m there. When I went with my family on a listener cruise to Alaska, I managed to broadcast from the Last Frontier. In More than eleven years on the air, I’ve never --- repeat, never --- missed an entire week of broadcasting.
I’ve also been hugely fortunate in terms of my health: I’ve taken precisely one sick day in the eleven years on the air (I lost my voice that day, and though I showed up at the station Jeremy sent me home). When I travel for a lecture or public appearance, I invariably manage to broadcast my show from wherever I happen to be speaking.
I mention this record not as a form of braggadocio about my endurance, but to emphasize the point that I love my work and feel grateful to the audience that makes it possible. I hate missing shows for any reason in part because there’s hardly an activity I enjoy more than radio. The fact that I just gave up six days of broadcasting isn’t an indication that I take radio so lightly, but that I try to take religious tradition so seriously.
In that regard, we’ll face no more interruptions due to Jewish observance for the next 6 months – until Passover arrives in April. The winter holiday of Chanukah is a minor festival, and there’s no problem in working straight through its eight days of mostly evening celebration. The total number of full holy day restrictions that observant Jews will face in the course of a year is 13, and some of those days invariably fall on Saturday and Sunday so they don’t interfere with work.
I’m grateful to my producers, Jeremy and Greg, who make it possible for the show to operate (with guests hosts or tape) in my absence, to the excellent guest hosts (Dave Boze, Ruben Navarrette and Peter Weisbach) who sat in for me for one day each in the last few weeks. I’m appreciative to program directors and station managers across the country who understand (and, mostly, support) the reasons I take these days off, to our two college student daughters who traveled home for all the holidays to make our home full of sweetness and energy, and I’m thankful most of all to a traditional system that continues to enrich my life – allowing me to return to work with sharpened perspective, renewed energy and irresistible joy.