I got a call about a TV slot a few days before Rosh Hashanah, because Albany’s WTEN Channel 10 wanted to do a quick segment on Rosh Hashanah traditions in the morning show before the holiday. You can see the 3-minute clip here. I’d like to share two Rosh Hashanah life lessons from this experience. I’ve be on TV before, when they showed up at Shabbos House for Chanukah or other times, but had never been in-studio before.
COLLAR STAYS
A Chabad media advisor made the connection, and one of the things he told me was “Wear collar stays.”
Collar stays!? This guy must not know me! I’m not the sharpest dresser to say the least. I’m a college Rabbi, I enjoy the informality and casual style. You guys know me. Telling me to wear collar stays is way out of my league. In fact, I might not even have heard of Collar Stays if not for the buzz about a company David Schottenstein founded called “SwissStays” – a whole company doing nothing but this!
The absurdity of this advice (for me, at least) for a segment about the Jewish New Year, made me think of it in terms of Rosh Hashanah. Sometimes it can feel that the hype of this holiday is way out of our league. All this talk of repentance and personal transformation, the much longer prayers than usual, the emphasis on spirituality and holiness – realistically, many of us are totally not up to that. Much of the prayers or the language can feel way above our heads.
So what does all this heavy emphasis on prayer and repentance and fancy holy liturgical language do for us? It sets the tone, it keeps the bar high. It shows us a glimpse of where we ought to be, and small steps to get there in our own way. It creates the mood – so that we know that something serious is at stake, even if we don’t understand the specifics or highest levels.
That’s what the collar-stays advice did for me. I had no intention of wearing collar-stays! But when the media guy said that I knew that I had to put on a nice shirt and clean jacket, brush up and look my best.
(As things turned out, I was indeed wearing collar-stays! Little did I know, but the new shirt my wife gave me has built in – albeit temporary – collar stays. Who knew!?)
LIVE TV
Not sure where I missed the memo, but I kind of assumed this would be a taped interview to be edited and aired at a later time. I think the media advisor from Chabad thought the same, because he told me “you never know which clip they’re going to use.” But when Heather from WTEN brought me into the studio, and gave me the heads-up that we’re a couple of minutes away, and the down to the 15-second warning, I realized that this is live! Indeed it was, we were live on the 9am Sunday morning segment. Heather Kovar and UAlbany alumnus WTEN meteorologist Greg Pollak were very helpful in putting me at ease and comfortable doing a live segment.
Then I realized – gee, this is so common in real-life for us to visualize our experience as being taped with the expectations that it will be edited and modified and can be dealt with later. But the truth is: Life is Live!