Shana Tova, which in English Means "Let's Just Wait to the Last Minute"

It’s not like the Jewish New Year sneaks up on you. You can google it for when it takes place years in advance. My calendar automatically places it as an entry. Holiday greetings are loudly expressed in every place you go to here in Tel Aviv, well in advance of the event. But add in a little thing like the government announcing another lock-down for the next 4 weeks and all of a sudden folks remember, “right, we have a holiday meal to prepare in a few days. What the fuck are we going to do?”. I can tell you what people here are doing. Just a quick glance at the bookings that came into our soul food kitchen in the previous 3 days says it all.

So what is it about putting things off to the last minute? My maternal grandfather, Frank Stein, ran a clothing store in Americus, Georgia for half a century. He once told me that he changed the closing hours on his store from 7 pm to 8 pm, because people would always come in a few minutes before 7. He figured it made sense to extend the business day one hour. Nope. People just started streaming in a few minutes before 8 pm instead of 7. What is that about?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m grateful, very grateful, for the business. But there is something amiss here, something I’ve missed and need to get my head around. On the one hand, our kitchen is all about slow cooking (it has kinship with the Slow Food Movement in case you’re interested). On the other hand, this whole food business world we live in takes place against the backdrop of time-starved lives. We farm out to others what we don’t have time for ourselves. I think that one of the unintended consequences of this phenomenon is that we then amplify (and thus intensify) our time-starved ethos to others, elsewhere.

My grandfather knew this well: He extended his closing time by one hour, so he returned home to his family dinner an hour or more later, which had its own knock-on effects with his wife Jenny and their two daughters Betty (my mom) and Ann. And they in turn carried this lateness thing forward into their own adult lives. Whose pace pales in comparison to the pace of life today. It’s moments like preparing for the New Year that I am struck by our need not just for a Slow Food Movement, but a Slow Life Movement. I know. I’m kidding myself.