And in fact, by not telling us, we could just make it worse for you. A few years ago, when another one of my sisters, Feigy, told us that she was getting engaged the following Sunday, she also refused to tell use her chosson’s name, so we all decided to call him Alter, because at some point she’d previously told us that she hated that name. And we said, “Wouldn’t it be funny if your bashert was actually named Alter, and there’s nothing you could do about it?” So when she refused to tell us his name for an entire weekend, we took to referring to him as “Alter” until we found out what his name actually was: Alter. Okay, so it wasn’t Alter, but I don’t use real names of family members in my articles, so as far as my articles are concerned, I’ve been calling him Alter ever since. This is how I pick the fake names that I use. Of course, this doesn’t really bother Feigy at all, because a) her name isn’t really Feigy, and b) she doesn’t really read my articles.
And speaking of not really reading my articles:
Dear Mordechai,
When is your next book coming out already? And what is it going to be called?
Everyone
Dear Everyone,
Actually, my fifth book, which was due out Sukkos 2014, is coming out later this month, IY”H. It’s a little bit late.
The idea is to get the book out before Shavuos, so that the women will have something to read while their husbands spend three days sleeping off the six hours they stayed up learning. And then their husbands can read it that whole week after Yom Tov when they’re no longer able to fall asleep.
And no, you can’t know the title yet. It’s some big federal secret.
Or maybe it’s embarrassing. So for now, we’ll call it Alter.
Originally, the book was supposed to be called Jewish Time. I picked that title because: a) it accurately represented when most of my articles are handed in, relative to the deadlines, and b) it sounds like something people say before they start discussing Jewish topics. “Okay, enough talk about the election. It’s Jewish Time.”
Then I wrote a whole column about how the book was coming out, in which I asked for cover ideas, and I started putting it together. But somehow, every time I sat down to work on the book, something came up. There were other deadlines, my daughter’s bas mitzvah, and then there was a period of several months when my back went out. So now it’s more than a year and a half later, and I’m beginning to think the title is cursed. Maybe this is Hashem’s way of teaching me a lesson about making fun of the concept of Jewish time. Or maybe telling people the name too early is an ayin hara. Maybe that’s why chassanim and kallos don’t do it. Though by that logic, they shouldn’t tell anyone their fiance’s name until the actual wedding. Each side would just send out their own invitations that read something like, “You are cordially invited to the wedding of our son, Alter, to be held in Monsey, because that’s where the kallah’s from. Maybe.”
So obviously, there must be some time that it’s okay to say the name. I guess once some kind of date is set. And a time, which people will shop up fashionably ignore.
Jewish time!
So I might as well tell you that the title of my upcoming book, which is coming up sometime before Shavuos, Jewish time, is: