End of Holiday Musings

The holidays have finally ended. Insert sigh of relief here. It's been a long, hard, and stressful season. Of course, I've felt this way every year since I started college and schools stopped giving me vacation every time a Jewish holiday rolled around. This year, however, was particularly difficult and forced me into thinking some thoughts about schooling that I never have before. 

Since I can remember I have been a fan of secular education, especially for college. To me, the idea of staying locked up in a Jewish bubble so that you don't have to deal with the outside world is a complete vinahafoch hu of what Judaism is supposed to be. As Norman Lamm said repeatedly in Torah U'Madda, Jews are not supposed to be insular and only be among ourselves. We're supposed to be an or lagoyim, and that entails being among the other nations. Aside from that, I always felt like going to YU and working for a Jewish organization was, in essence, giving up on something better for the sake of easiness. Paying $30,000 of tuition is a steep price to pay to get vacation on Succot.

This mentality served me just fine during college. There, I got to choose my schedule and could easily make my schedule so that I didn't miss too much during the holidays. Yes, on a few occasions it was impossible, but professors were generally understanding and according to university policy they were obligated to accommodate us. Was it annoying when all my friends at Stern and YU got off for basically the entire month? Yep. But I would continually pat myself on the back, knowing that I was living up to my ideals and taking the road less traveled.

Move on to my first year of grad school. All of a sudden I can't choose my classes. I have obligations in my lab. All of a sudden, the holidays mean missing out on major chunks of information. Even worse, it means continually telling me colleagues that they need to cover for me in various lab tasks. As the month wore on, I felt guiltier and guiltier leaving. Judaism was suddenly a burden, a terrible burden that I kept wishing I could throw off and get rid of. 

And now I wonder. Though I am extremely proud of the route I've chosen, I wonder if some of my friends really made very intelligent choices. Those that work for Jewish institutions don't have to deal with any of this. The month was an enjoyable one with time off for family and friends, and more importantly, time off to appreciate the holidays themselves. What I wouldn't give to have felt that appreciation this year rather than an impending sense of doom.