"Rav Silver, don’t ask me silly questions. Open the paper from last year and the year before, and copy something from there"

The Isru Chag edition of the paper is always sparse.

Gedalya sits in his office, worn to a frazzle, approving news reports as they trickle in. A boat carrying fifty-eight passengers sank off the coast of Sudan. Now he knows Sudan has a coast. You live and learn.

“Maybe you could go over the material for this weekend’s Hed Kevodah in the meantime,” Shimshon suggests, “as long as you’re sitting here anyway.”

The night editor has an even more fantastic idea. “Write up a Motzaei Chag item for us,” he says, bustling in, half peremptory and half pleading. “I know it’s not your job, but I’ve got no staff here. They all disappeared. Probably finding some chometz to eat.”

Gedalya is taken aback. “What… where am I supposed to get the material from?”

“From your head, just make it up. Here, start it like this: ‘The Jewish nation has just celebrated yet another Yom Tov with great fervor and a deep sense of elevation.’”

“How can elevation be deep?”

“Rav Silver, don’t ask me silly questions. Open the paper from last year and the year before, and copy something from there. Or make something up. It’s just generic stuff, Rav Silver.”

And so, Gedalya sits at the office, filling in for all his colleagues who wouldn’t take the Motzaei Yom Tov night shift. At home, his children are packing away the Pesach dishes. He has to get in as many work hours as possible before the trip. He also has to find out how to set up his laptop computer and make the necessary arrangements for working long distance while he’s in America.

“Here, eat something, get a little sugar in your blood,” says Shimshon, plunking down a box of kosher l’Pesach coconut cookies on Gedalya’s desk. “Badatz Eidah Hachareidis.”

There’s some instant coffee in the kitchenette. No milk, too bad.

The phone rings.

“Tovi?”

“Yes, it’s me. Abba, I have an idea! Maybe we could go by ship?”

“Go where?” he asks, confused.

“To California. Then Ima could come with us.”