Blog/September 2013/Sep 27th

Sep 27th (See this week's devar torah)

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Hi, again!

The week-long sukkot holiday reached its conclusion this week, when we celebrated the holiday of shemini ʿaṣeret… perhaps the most well-hidden of the major holidays. It was relatively quiet, the weather was outstanding and we enjoyed all of it.

During the week of ḥol hamoʿed we had Esther’s family here with us (they left the day before the second yom-tov). Among other things, they enjoyed the beautiful beaches of Israel, the Golan Heights and the Old City of Jerusalem. They pretty much hit every corner of the Land this time around, from Eilat to Gamla. We hope they enjoyed it!

Unfortunately for me, my boss called me from work while we were in Eilat, asking me “where are you?”. This, after I had told him numerous times that I was taking vacation on the couple of days prior to sukkot. I literally sent four emails, both to him and to the CEO, making sure they were aware of my availability. I also spoke to my boss about it, and to my co-workers. Aside from sending them a telegram, I don’t know what else I could have done to raise their awareness.

But the CEO was in a snit about people not being in the office; and so I got a phone-call while I was under sea-level, at the Aquarium in Eilat. My boss told me that “it would be good” if I came in to work during ḥol hamoʿed, implying it “would be bad” if I didn’t. I’m not sure I can express, without using profanity, just how unhappy that phone call made me — nor how it instantly ruined for me what had been up until then a very pleasant vacation.

So I did in fact go in to the office one of the days of moʿed, and ended up working from home another couple days; presumably we’ll get “overtime pay”, but since I’m on half-time there, I don’t know just how that’s supposed to work. This is the first time since making aliyah that I’ve worked on moʿed. Not making me happy, not at all.

In any event, every one else did have a good time, and I did too when I was able to participate. But my desire to “help out” my current employer has been severely curtailed. Fortunately, I’m starting to cultivate other clients for my business, and perhaps I’ll be less dependent upon my current employer soon, B”H!

We still have our sukkah up, it’ll stay up until after shabbat this time. No particular reason but for my laziness. We’re looking forward to a quiet shabbat, after which we’ll have a pretty busy week coming up. More on that next time around!

After a whole week of fantastic food and wonderful guests, we’re taking a bit of a break for shabbat. We’ll have the second meal out with our friends to help celebrate their son’s bar-mitsva, and for our own meals we’ve got:
homemade ḥallah, carrot-dill pashtida, zucchini pashtida, baked salmon, various salatim and cake.

Until next week,
shabbat shalom!

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