Don’t touch our Fridays
Op-ed: Proposal to cut school week to five days robs parents of last real piece of freedom they have left
When you turned Lag B'Omer into a two-day school vacation, we racked our brains trying to juggle once again between our children and work. When you built a grand bridge between Yom Kippur and Simchat Torah, so that teachers could travel over it towards a state of tranquility (after all, they hadn’t had a vacation since Rosh Hashana), we collected the last pennies the summer camps failed to get a hold of, and took the kids up north. Hey, we've even learned to get over the long Passover vacation.
But this time we won't stay silent.
Because Friday morning is the last real piece of freedom we have left during the week. The single prized possession of the sane, pleasant intimacy we once had, before becoming the next generation's entertainment group. The only opportunity to spend a morning together with our cappuccino and newspaper at the local café; to visit the mall for those new bed sheets that have been waiting for us in the window for the past two months; and even to just chill out at home and resume all those phone conversations we never got a chance to finish.
Every parent knows that Friday morning is the shortest time unit in the universe. Even during the sweetest moments together, the shadow of the clock hangs over our heads, reminding us that at 11:45 – it's over. We must be at the school gate to pick up our daughter. And then spend another hour waiting for 12:45, when it's time to pick up her younger brother from kindergarten. And then all at once, like Cinderella at midnight, we turn into servants again too.
So Mr. Minister, organize the vacation schedule whichever way you like, just don't even think about touching our Fridays.
