Rosh HaShana (1998)

The year was 1998. Rosh HaShana. The start of a new year in the Jewish calendar. The secular world was buzzing with the approach, in only two years, of the next millennium. The 1900's would be replaced by the 2000's, and in the midst of this was looming the threat of what we called the Y2K bug. For us, however...

The joke of the cartoon is that just about nobody really lives their daily lives according to the Jewish calendar. Many years ago I was rushing to a meeting in downtown Jerusalem. I pulled my car into a curbside parking space and pulled out a pad of "parking cards." What I had to do was to pull off a card from the pad, mark the month, date, and time of day and hang the card in the window of my car. A neat invention which rid our streets of parking meters. I checked my watch to get the time, but being late and hysterical, I couldn't remember the date. Frantically I looked around. Incredibly, the streets were empty. One smartly dressed gentleman carrying a briefcase and a cane came ambling down the street. "Mister", I asked, waving the pad of parking cards, "what's the date?"
"Hebrew or secular?" he responded.

Happy New Year! The new Jewish year is now 5766, oh, and these days they're selling us computerized parking cards!)