A chance to realize how much we need Him in every aspect of what we do
Here at the magazine, the days before Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are our peak crunch time. Once, a fellow editor described it as a dark tunnel that sucks you in and blocks everything else out.
Even with advance planning, there’s always a last-minute rush. There are pieces that fall apart, new ones to commission, files upon files to edit, photos to track down, captions to write, stacks and stacks of printouts to check. We work until late, then wake up early and start again. We keep checking and rechecking and adjusting our grids until they begin to invade our dreams. We promise our families that soon we’ll be back home for real, able to focus on them fully instead of panicking over the interviewee who dropped out or the photo shoot that didn’t happen yet.
Between crises we hear snatches of nusach wafting through a window, or sing about apples and honey as we get the little ones ready for school, or do our best to ignore the neighbor’s kids as they conduct yet another shofar practice session. And we know, on some level, that the Yamim Noraim are all too close. But the pressure is so intense, the deadlines so close, the workload so daunting…
Then it all stops. At some point, we find ourselves inside a shul, staring at familiar words in a machzor, and shivering. Because the Day is here, because so much hangs in the balance, because teshuvah is the order of the hour — and what do we have to show? A really fat Yom Tov magazine?
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