We waited for the tidal wave. And waited some more

F

 or the first time in my almost six years of writing for this magazine, my column did not appear on its most recent due date. The reason? In Israel, the all-purpose, one-size-fits-all excuse is “mishum sibot techniot — for technical reasons.”

I hated to disappoint my tens of thousands (modesty prevents me from writing “hundreds of thousands”) of loyal, fanatic readers who hang on my every word and who cannot wait from issue to issue to read my insightful commentary. I know there are such people, because my fans (both of them: my two daughters) tell me there must be at least 100,000 such faithful readers, and these young ladies wouldn’t lie to their own father, would they?

I can only imagine those throngs of readers queued up first thing in the morning at post offices and magazine shops demanding the issue with my column as it rolls hot off the press, and then, after fighting over the few available copies, their frantic search through the Table of Contents (“there must be some mistake, it’s not listed!”) and then scrambling to the back end of the magazine ( I am always in the back end, but I am Jewish and read from right to left, so I am really in the front end) in a vain hunt for my column. My heart aches for their disappointment, nay, their dashed hopes, their frustration, their cruel and bitter disillusion. How could they spend Shabbos without being able to discuss what I wrote? How could they compensate — and I say this with all humility — for the learning and the wisdom that unfailingly emanates from those columns?

I wish there were some way I could dissuade them from holding a mass rally in front of the Mishpacha offices, demanding either an explanation, or the printing of two columns next issue instead of the normative one column. I would speak to the massive, placard-carrying multitude and ask them to disperse peacefully to their homes, and would urge them to look with kind eyes and forgiving hearts at the technical reasons that kept the column from appearing. I would pledge to the crowd (fifty thousand? At least) and to the assembled print and electronic media that neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night nor sibot techniot would ever again stay my chosen words from the swift appearance at their appointed place. Ever loyal, the crowd would disperse peacefully without any violence.

As if reading my thoughts, the mass rally never materialized, for which I was grateful. But I alerted our Letters editor to brace herself for the tidal wave of angry letters that would shortly come pouring in from my readership, all demanding to know why the column did not appear.

We waited for the tidal wave. And waited some more. And waited and waited. And what happened? Nothing. Not a single letter came in. Not one.

But that could not be. My readers are loyal and faithful. Their odd silence can only be attributed to shock: so deep was their trauma at not finding my column that they were rendered immobile and stricken dumb. Clearly they were temporarily incapacitated by the ensuing anxiety, their minds weakened, their willpower enfeebled, their vitality drained.

I checked again with the Mishpacha office. Did any letters come in asking about my missing column? No. A brief e-mail? No. A text message? No. A fax, a phone call? No. Not a word? Nothing?

Nothing.

Nevertheless, I am convinced that there are many protesting letters out there, probably hundreds of them, but for some reason they are undeliverable, stuck in the cloud, out in the ether. Why they never reached our magazine office is, clearly and obviously, due to one reason only: sibot techniot.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 696)