On those saddest and most challenging of days, we get a certain clarity: This is where we need to be and this is what we need to be doing

When it comes to our Yom Tov issues, we have a funny unofficial rule: The piece that’s ready first is the one that inevitably gets postponed to a different issue.

This has happened countless times. That one piece that’s been edited, laid out, and proofread since Shevat — unlike the flurry of last-minute arrivals that keep the team working long past midnight — ends up being removed from the final Yom Tov grid.

There’s a corollary to that rule. If the bulk of your content is ready before a closing day, hold your breath; more likely than not there will be some breaking news and you’ll have to adjust all your plans.

Last week was a good example. Before Shabbos, we were looking forward to a smooth closing. We had everything ready to go, except the news package and a few small pieces. Then came one petirah. After those first few moments of trying to digest the news, we got to work: assigning new content, adjusting the grids, reworking the balance, collecting photos…

Then came another loss.

Then another.

On Monday morning, when a contributor of ours called me, I responded with, “Don’t tell me you’re calling about another levayah.”

He was taken aback for a moment. But that was the feeling. It was blow after blow after blow, with so little time to respond, so little time to do things right.

We’ve been blessed with an amazing team that always goes the extra mile — even on a typical week. But when a gadol leaves us, their sense of mission is almost palpable. Graphic designers, proofreaders, production managers all adjust their schedules and expectations to give kavod to a leader and to give readers a sense of what we lost.

While secular publications will keep ready obituaries for major figures on file, we don’t believe in that here. We don’t think we’ll have the siyata d’Shmaya we’ll need if we show ourselves “ready” for a gadol’s passing a moment earlier than necessary.

And Hashem has helped us. We feel it when the right person offers to share a story just when we need it most; when a photographer sends a full archive and amid the hundreds of options we manage to find the most beautiful, glowing photos; when titles and cover lines that can usually take hours of agonizing come with unusual felicity.

Along with that Divine aid, there is something else we feel on these very intense closing days. On a usual week, amid the technicalities of grids and highlighters and commas and fonts, we don’t always remember, at every moment, what the real point of all this work is. We might be pulled in many directions — wishing we could be elsewhere, wondering what we’re missing, fielding phone calls from family who just want us home already.

But on those saddest and most challenging of days, we get a certain clarity: This is where we need to be and this is what we need to be doing. The printers can send ominous warnings and the pressure can squeeze at our stomachs, but we know why we’re working and whose kavod we’re trying to convey. So we pray for His help, we hope that all the big pieces and little pieces come together, and we keep working.

—Shoshana Friedman, Managing Editor

Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 848.