'Acharei Hachagim': A diary entry from after the holidays in Israel

October 29, 2024

It’s the day after the holidays, also known as acharei hachagim.

I wake up in the morning at 7 a.m. in daylight savings mode. I consider getting out of bed and tackling the to-do list. I am lethargic. There’s no way I can exist on this Earth at 7 a.m.

I go back to sleep and wake up at 10. Perfect. The morning is partially over, and I am pleased with that. It’s just late enough in the morning to light a fire under myself to start working, but not so late that all is lost. Plus, who wants to deal with acharei hachagim? It’s like the first day back to school after summer break.

I take a slow roll into the kitchen and wake up my brain by eating, drinking coffee, and laughing at reels on Instagram. I answer work-related WhatsApp messages and calls.

My inbox is filled with excited messages and emails from people who woke up energized to tackle the new year with their business concepts and related nonsense. Good for them.

I reach out to a friend who I know will commiserate with me. He tells me that there’s no way to embrace this Sunday acharei hachagim in full and that it should really be a half day, with Monday being the true start to the week. There’s no way this Sunday could possibly be a fully charged day. I relax a bit. He’s right. There’s simply too much pressure on this day.

“Over the last month, every time there’s something that comes up, it’s met with ‘acharei hachagim’ and it’s like a TBD [to be determined]. That’s the temporary solution. But it’s not an excuse. It’s an actual real thing that needs to get done!” said digital marketer Shlomo Wiesen when describing the dynamic.

“The list of TBD things starts to get bigger and bigger, and then acharei hachagim hits and suddenly it’s Sunday. And it’s an avalanche of things on this list, and it can be overwhelming. What I try to do is make a list of priorities and choose just one or two things for Sunday. If I don’t do that, I feel fatigued.

“And I can’t use the acharei hachagim excuse when it’s already acharei hachagim,” he noted wryly.

Wiesen even commented on the comical reality of the IDF responding to Iran’s October 1 attack as soon as the holidays were out.

“The day after Simchat Torah, we attack our enemies – acharei hachagim.” The Iranians even said they knew when the attack was coming. Did they have intel? No. They just know about acharei hachagim. It’s comical, but it’s real.”

Sunday scaries?

When I went to sleep on Saturday night, I was genuinely energized and excited to begin the new year.

During Sukkot, I even did a session with my independent artist friend Nicole Raviv. We had spoken about her business, and she posed some important questions in the sukkah over lunch we purchased at a cafe. I decided to set up a meeting for her during Hol Hamoed [the intermediary days of Sukkot] because I had been told that Sukkot was the “holiday of the future” and a good time to think big and broaden your vision.

We met very late in the evening... 11:15 pm. I came up with the rules. We would verbally present each other our business plans for the next year in the space of five minutes. We took notes on each other’s visions and shared our feedback. Then we took 10 minutes in silence to write down the proposed action steps.

We finished with a recap and screamed into the abyss from her terrace. We shouted into the wind, asking God for a variety of things, shared our feelings of gratitude, and made some statements that we realized were revealing of our insecurities and self-doubts. There was some good yet nervous laughter about those.

As I left our session completely exhausted, Nicole asked me if we could do that again in the future. Even during the regular work week. Of course we can. Will it have the same magic?

When Sunday, the first workday after the chagim rolled around, I was bereft of that energy.

I felt entirely disturbed. Deeply. Our hostages are not home. More of our men are dying. The week of this writing, Am Yisrael lost 24 men in battle, leaving 56 children without one of their parents.

For many people we spoke with about the Sunday return, they reported it was not only a challenge to jump back into work, but the depressing news events of the day had knocked the wind out of their sails. Sunday morning a terrorist rammed his truck into a bus outside of Tel Aviv, which killed one person, left five in critical condition, and injured 35. Later in the day the army released the names of the five reservists killed in Lebanon. This country, as it was trying to move ahead, was debilitated by the reminder of our circumstances.

As I pen this, I am sick. Literally. During the holiday season, Tel Aviv residents rampantly infected one another with the common cold.

Hitting pause

The holidays are a tricky time. For three weeks, life is on hold and you feel that you can’t get ahead. But that is the whole point. It’s meant to slow you down.

For a New Yorker like me, who did not grow up observing these holidays in their “full” or “observed” capacity, putting work and my cellphone away for three weeks is still shocking and frustrating. Especially when you need something from someone else who tells you “acharei hachagim.”

Even after several years of living in Israel, it is still mind-boggling to see a country pause business for nearly a month. I can relate to the concept from seeing the slowdown between Christmas and the New Year, but even that is only about a week.

I often dread the holidays. There’s so much to plan and execute before they begin. Then, during the holidays I try to enjoy, pray, and connect to self. “This isn’t so bad!” I say to myself while I am in synagogue praying or in someone’s lovely sukkah. More guilt. Why had I been hating the holidays so hard?

Upon reflection, I can honestly say that as a freelance journalist, I felt uncomfortable about not working and not being able to earn money for three weeks. Why is that hard to admit?

Resuming the good fight

I asked some friends what they felt about acharei hachagim. Most people were excited to get “back at it.” One even said that he started working Saturday night when the last Shabbat of the holiday season went out. That’s ambitious.

“By the end of the holidays, I was eager to dive back into my work, but more than that I felt recharged by the energy of Simchat Torah. While Oct. 7 on the Gregorian calendar was a heavy day, the Hebrew date of the 23rd of Tishrei brought joy and renewal as it’s intended to do. In that moment, I felt a powerful new beginning that I have never felt when centering my life around the Gregorian calendar,” said Shimon Rosen, 39.

One of my favorite responses (because I thought it was so real) came up in an impromptu conversation on the train from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv.

“It was already so heavy before the holiday season, leading up to October 7. My head was fatigued, and even simple things felt complex. It was too much to process,” said Josh Buchalter, an oleh from South Africa. “Before the chagim I felt I was dying; couldn’t continue. And now I feel like I can fight and not give up.”

For Buchalter, the holidays provided everything he needed. He felt it was all that it was intended to be.

“For me, the chagim were a deep reflection that I think the average secular Jew doesn’t have, and it was so necessary to enable me to process the year we had. We need to continue, so we actually need to take the time off. I have never thought so much about keeping Shabbat. It’s becoming a necessity,” Buchalter said.

He spent the Yom Kippur holiday at Aish HaTorah in Jerusalem’s Old City. This year he left his comfortable home in Herzliya to spend Yom Kippur alone. Booking into a hotel room, he made an effort to disconnect and reflect. He said the rabbi’s speech was so good, it impacted his start to the year.

In search of a true holiday

But there’s another element I think is crucial in his renewal process – a trip to a remote island. During the holiday break, the Buchalter family went to an island in Malawi. Without the Internet, the African island offered Buchalter a chance to disconnect from the war and feel his body heal from the traumas of the year. He said it was palpable.

I have been wondering about this. What is a true vacation? Is the holiday season, if spent in Israel with all the shtick, a true holiday? Or is a true holiday to be lying on the beach with no cellphone?

And while we discuss the difficulties of the work-chagim balance, there are people who are actually managing their chagim in between rocket attacks. Tel Aviv had a couple of sirens ring out during the holiday season, but it is nothing compared to what people in the North are dealing with.

I spoke with Liane Wakabayashi, who is also a freelancer at The Jerusalem Post. She wakes up every morning to a siren. At this point, she says it’s her alarm clock and that she’s been going to sleep earlier than usual in order to get enough rest to wake up and run for safety.

Her holidays were splattered with running to bomb shelters, even during synagogue services. She calls this her “new normal.”

The Magazine caught up with her on the phone while she was raking leaves in her garden.

“I was at my shul davening, and we had an air raid siren. The Torah was open, and we all had to run down the stairs into the safe space, which is the entry to the bathrooms. We stayed there for 10 minutes and went back upstairs. It’s a Breslov community, so we stayed in joy. They sang their hearts out and carried us back into the atmosphere of the day. I was impressed and moved by that,” Wakabayashi said.

She made it a point to walk 20 minutes to her synagogue, even with the risk of rockets falling from the sky. She said it’s important to carry on normally, despite the “psychological bullying from Iran.”

Another friend of mine had to make the difficult decision to remain in Tel Aviv for Sukkot. Typically, she goes home to Haifa for the holidays, but after Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur were riddled with siren alerts, Chen tried to minimize being at such risk again. Plus, some of her family were scattered around the country’s borders serving in the military. This year, she spent Sukkot with friends instead of family

“The constant threat of missiles made the journey too risky, and my parents urged me to stay safe. Still, in Israel, friends and community are like family. I was invited to a holiday gathering in a beautiful sukkah in Tel Aviv, where warmth, festivity, and laughter filled the evening. Despite the underlying sadness and fear, the holiday spirit shone through.

“This is the strength of us Israelites: Through persecutions, constant attacks, and so much more, we turn life’s toughest moments into something uplifting and keep moving forward,” Chen said.

How to rest and reset?

As I write this article, I think about the rules of our holidays. Do we need the structure?

The Jewish holidays are strict in that we are told what to do and where to be during most days of this special season. Does this help us reboot? Or does it serve as some alternate vacation that doesn’t really hit the spot?

What kind of rest and reset works for you? 

Is it even possible to repair when our country is mourning one year of war, running into bomb shelters during prayer, abandoning families in exchange for a feeling of safety, making or attending endless meals – and then returning to a laundry list of to do’s and to be’s in the Jewish year ahead? 

Please get in touch to share your thoughts: shannafuld@gmail.com