I started an “EVS Journal” back in 2020, when I worked in environmental services in the operating room of a small community hospital in west-central New Jersey. I’ve decided to start posting edited versions of them here, for whatever interest they might still have. 

EVS Journal #5
December 15, 2020

Seth, Bilal, and I are doing a late turnover in OR 2. Alexa is playing Christmas carols. I get annoyed.

“Two Muslims and a Jew in here, and we’re listening to Christmas carols. Why?”

Without a word or reaction, Seth commands Alexa to play “Hava Nagila.”

“That’s better,” I say.

“I hate this fucking song,” Seth rejoins. Hava Nagila continues.

“This is the song of your people—our people,” I plead. I’ve sold everyone in the OR on the idea that a decade in a Jewish family has made me half-Jewish, even if the math doesn’t really work. So Hava Nagila has become the song of “my people.” Anything to get through the shift.

“I still hate it,” he says. He’s the one who put it on.

I begin to dance to it with a rag in my hand, twirling the rag around on the borderline anti-Semitic premise that this shtick makes me seem Jewish. Tevye’s in the OR, yo. The last time I saw “Fiddler on the Roof” was 1976. Also the only time. Third grade play. One of my best friends, from Mrs. Alpert’s class, was Tevye. Yes, some of my best friends have played Tevye. 

Bilal, who’s mopping, joins in. Seth, who’s doing some technical thing with the anesthesia table, rolls his eyes, and mutters “Jesus fucking Christ” under his breath.

In sum: Two Muslims are dancing to Hava Nagila, provoking the withering scorn of the only Jew in the room, who, in exasperation, has invoked the name of the Jew most directly responsible for the existence of Christmas, itself the source of all Christmas carols. With man this is impossible, but with God, all things are possible. 

Eventually, the song ends. I’m tempted to play “Tradition” at this point, but they’re about to bring the patient in. For a second this seems like a consideration in favor of reprise: what if the patient is Jewish? But it’s not protocol–not tradition, you might say–to greet a sedated surgical patient with “Fiddler on the Roof,” and anyway, everyone around here is Christian, and kind of touchy about it. You wouldn’t want to take the Christ out of Christmas. That’d be like taking the id out of Eid, or the ha-ha out of Rosh Hashana.

Glancing at the lyrics, it hadn’t previously occurred to me that Hava Nagila is as woke a song as it is. But so traditional at the same time. A funny balance. 

OR 2 is ready to go, bitches. Off to OR 6.