10/9/99

Erev Rosh HaY2K

What we should really  pray for tonight is a happy new Gregorian year.

    Here it is, New Year's Eve, and the Jews are laughing. While the rest of the world is building up to a seizure, already worried about their New Year's Eve, we know what to expect tomorrow. If something doesn't work, we already know why: it's Shabbat.
    It so happens that January 1, 2000, is also scheduled to be Shabbat (I say "scheduled," because who knows?), and the way things are turning out, it will be the first time in history the entire world takes a day of rest on a Saturday.
    That's why a few billion goyim are stopping Jews in the streets today, asking if they can watch us rest. On their Sabbath, they turn on lights and expect the telephone to ring, so this is a new concept for them. They are not prepared. But we are.
    By us, if the world stops, we won't know until a full day later. Nothing works? Who cares! We walk to shul, walk home, eat a lunch that was cooked the day before, take a nap and maybe go out for a little stroll. Just as long as the toilet works, nothing else matters.
    The goyim need instructions from us on how to live like that. It wouldn't hurt to be nice and give them advice, but I think you should skip over the part about the "Shabbes goy." It won't help them.
    However, they will definitely be interested in learning how we spend New Year's Eve in fervent prayer. They too will be praying on December 31, but they won't know what to pray for.
    We have a lot of experience in such things, and here too we can give them a lot of advice. Regularly throughout our history the world seemed like it was going to end for us, and every time it didn't, we knew why: because we prayed that God should save the Jewish People, and he did. Our way of saying thanks was to remember the miracle with a new prayer, or sometimes a whole day of prayers. With so many calamities we have become very adept at breast-beating, beseeching and geshreying, and by now we are the world's experts at communicating with God. You ever hear of a Christian praying on December 31? No. We will have to teach them, which is why if you look at any synagogue window tonight, you will see hordes of Christians peeking in and taking notes.
    Apparently they're right about the Jews being smart. Here we are, on our own New Year's verge, and no one is talking about what if. With Yom Kippur approaching, we have enough to contemplate without also having to think about the Millennium Bug, but we can be fully confident that the shul's computers won't mix up the seating plan because of some Y5.76K problem.
    And that's another reason the Jews are laughing into their hats. We had our Millennium Bug 3,760 years ago. Or, put another way, we were already on shpilkes about the big two-oh-oh-oh a full 1,760 years before the goyim even got to Year One.
    But of course, when we were freaking about our Y2K, they were laughing at us, so you can't blame us now for returning the compliment.
     We were smart to mark our new year a few months before January 1. It is known that our sages thought of that: on advice from the leading gematrians of the day, who fretted about the ominous dates 9/9/99 (yesterday) and 1/1/00, they worked out a perfect calendar.
    It's not just Rosh Hashana we manage to get through before the world temporarily ends. We squeeze in Yom Kippur, a week-plus for Succot, Simhat Torah, another eight days for Hanukka, and for good measure a minor fast day on December 19, and then we give the Y2K tzuris plenty of time to work itself out before our next important date, Purim. And if God forbid things are still crazy by then, what the heck, it's the only time of year we can go meshuga, so we can legally get drunk and not worry about it.
    The goyim didn't plan for this. You know what holiday happens immediately after the Millennium Bug comes into effect? I mean, besides Boxing Day on January 2, which will probably pass unnoticed in all the confusion. They have a whole series of ... New Years! What are they going to do: cancel New Year's on account of the new year?
     Things will be so topsy-turvy, even the groundhog will not be operational on Groundhog Day. In America, that's considered serious.
    What the whole world should do -- now, while there's still time -- is switch over to the Jewish calendar. That would be the most brilliant solution to the Y2K bug, because that would give all the computer experts an extra 240 years to work out the problem before the next time it comes up, in our sexennium (you should pardon the expression.)
    Being the way we (Jews) are, I know what's going through your mind as we approach the year 6000: "Oy! Only 240 years! We'll never be ready in time!"
    On the other hand, being the way we (Israelis) are, for the next 239 years, 11 months and 29 days, I know what we'll be saying: "yihye b'seder." And everything will work out, because -- I can almost guarantee this -- on erev Rosh Hashana in 5999, we'll be in shul praying fervently for salvation, and one miracle or another is sure to happen. That is, unless the Moshiach comes before then, in which case it'll all be academic.
    But that's getting a bit ahead of ourselves. Back here in 5760 and 1999 (a youthful 1420 if you're a Moslem), the End of Days is upon us (yet again) and tonight we're going to be packing our houses of worship and making a big mistake. Unless the Reform temples are planning something I don't know about, Jews around the world are going to be praying for the wrong thing.
    We will not be praying for the miracle we really need: instead of reflecting on our petty transgressions of the year gone by, it is incumbent upon us -- we have His ear, so the entire world is counting on us -- to discuss with God the year ahead.
    Look, Joshua prayed that the sun be delayed when he was trying to enter Jericho (this was before they built the bypass), and lo, God performed what might have appeared impossible. So there is heavenly precedent for such a thing, therefore, we should at least try to get him to do it again, just until someone fixes the Y2K problem.
    The hard part, I am aware, is convincing our religious leaders of the importance, because they don't understand the looming disaster: they think Y2K means "Yom Tzom Kippur."
    The alternative is another fast day -- Tevet 23, corresponding to January 1 -- recalling yet another calamity. 
    It's not as if we don't know what's going to hit us. We know. We're like sitting ducks about to get our goose cooked, or in a Jewish sense, we're a chicken about to be plunged into boiling water.
    I know, I'm merely a humor writer and not a chief rabbi, but I beg of the Jewish People, from Timbuctu to Kalamazoo: Pray tonight for deliverance from the doom awaiting us. 
    Because even though this Y2K is not our bug -- it's a totally Christian thing -- when everything comes crashing down, you just know who they're going to blame.