You know all those Chinese Auctions you always see hosted by Oorah or other places? Well, did you ever think about how exactly they get all those great prizes? Who donates those flat-screen TVs, tickets to Israel or diamond necklaces?

Well, every organization has their contacts and people who owe them favors. But they also have the people like me who cold-call any number of organizations in an effort to get them to donate prizes for free PR (we are, after all, going to reach an audience of over 100,000 people). This trade often doesn't work because the companies are too small for that to really matter and advertising in their local Jewish newspaper provides them with enough business to keep them happy.

I, on the other hand, remain glued to the phone, excitedly informing people of all the reasons that they want to give us free things.

Something really nice happened today, though. One woman whom I called to discuss car-leasing options told me that she personally couldn't donate free leases but she could donate her time by calling dealerships for us and trying to see whether they would want to help us out. I thought that was really generous of her. So huzzah for this kind lady!

And now I return to making phone calls.

Deadline time: Pieces of paper swirl on and off my desk. Red pens litter the floor. Layouts are edited again and again, each time searching for perfection. I clutch a bottle of whiteout (breathing in appreciative whiffs of the wonderful chemically smell) erasing semi-colons, and inserting commas. The following is a photo of my desk during deadline. No, this is not staged. It actually looks like this. On the far left hand side of the desk sits my happy water bottle. It is powder blue, with a pink screw on lid and decorated with unicorns and flowers. It is my saving grace. I hastily gulp water (ROOM TEMP ONLY) and enjoy how cheerful its colors and unicorns make me. The frantic pace keeps up for about two weeks. Then the magazine goes to the printer and we can breathe. Or rather, we are forced to breath. No more dreams filled with dingbats or, horror of horrors, uppercase letters in the middle of a sentence.

People sometimes wonder what the perks of a job are. Well, here at the ALJO, it's free milk. Every Monday morning, a variety of milk cartons magically appear in our fridge...and there they remain, dwindling in number as we guzzle them down.

We're given enough milk to ensure that we have strong bones and can work heartily away!

But seriously, it's nice that they give us free milk. And free coffee. Hence the king of all coffee machines: the Keurig.


Long live drinkable beverages!

I'm working on building a website - not an easy task for someone with minimal programming/graphic design ability. But I get by with a little help from my friends. And a scientist's (I'm a trained bioengineer!) greatest trick: trial-and-error.

Then randomly, I got an anonymous email yesterday, from someone asking if I wanted help redesigning the logo on my website to look more like two hearts and simultaneously a Jewish star. I didn't know who sent it, and when I looked up the email address, turns out it's some random guy from North Dakota who designs logos and does other web things. This guy said he'd do it for free, and asked me for some specs on what I wanted. Shocked, I replied "Wow, thats actually exactly what I needed help with and didn't know where to turn, and I'd be totally grateful if you'd do that for me!"

A friend of mine found him through some forum, messaged with him, and asked him if he always goes around offering free logo design. He said no, normally he charges or just doesnt do things.
"but from time to time i offer my services to places
and while i'm not jewish nor a believer in love,
your goals are commendable"

What a lier, he totally is into love.

Be on the lookout for a new logo, coming soon! (hopefully...)

I dabble in everything, much as a dilettante does. (That's how I work best- dabbling is my longterm lifestyle.)

In any case, life at the ALJO today has consisted of the following things:

-Tediously typing people's birthdays (listed on one spreadsheet) into a different spreadsheet

-Designing a webpage (and being summoned to a meeting regarding that webpage)

-Designing a flyer alongside easily the most hilarious (and patient) graphic artist known to man (he signs all of his email correspondence with the highly evocative, friendly and otherwise entertaining 'GRINS'), Berish

-Pricing out edible goodies and creating yet another blog so that people will sign up to receive said edible goodies

-Irritating my coworkers when my modem/ computer decided to commit suicide loudly via burning hairdryer sounds because it couldn't handle viewing the scandalously clad participants on various ALJO programs

-Switching to a different computer, looking through 7 CDs and picking out pictures of Happy Kids on Camels only to learn they must be censored and photoshopped before we publish them because people like to complain about ridiculous things - the good part is this included laughing about headless camels

-Sending various logos and backgrounds to the lady who is designing our landing page while learning that the UGalilee program has no official logo (that's a tad bizarre)

-Eating a bag of Craisins, a bag of M&Ms and a cup of chocolate milk to sustain me and turning into a sugary lovable mess

-Changing the name of this blog because now I officially work for an Anonymous Large Jewish Organization- yippee!

Life at the Anonymous Large Jewish Organization (ALJO for short) is never boring.

I take that back. Life at the ALJO can occasionally be boring. This mainly happens when one is seated before a neverending list of folks and told to call them all and/or to update the list with random tidbits of information that it is nearly impossible to procure.

However, at the moment, life at the ALJO is far from boring.

You see, today is "Happy Kids on Camels" day.

To what am I referring?

Well, it's like this. The ALJO is actually a relatively sophisticated organization. We do research into our advertising and try to come up with methods to recruit participants to our programs in the most effective way. We have to reach out to many different audiences and must discover how to do this. In this particular case, we want to create a landing page that will please and intrigue unaffiliated Jews so that they will consider joining our 'Israel Free Spirit' Birthright trip. The question was: what to put on this page? What would draw people in but not terrify them?

An IDF soldier could potentially be too scary and evoke negative media images. However, a nice Bedouin on a camel doesn't really convey the essence of our trip.

As we sat in our offices, we looked at one another. At once, the answer came to our minds. It was almost as exciting as when the Great Computer calculated the answer to the universe= 42.

"Happy Kids On Camels!" we exclaimed.

And now we hunt for pictures.

(Addendum: And sadly, the pictures we do have of children on camels are not suitable for our work. It is all very saddening. But surely we will come up with something else that stirs people's hearts and ensures that the only thing they want to do is hop on a plane and kiss the holy ground of the Holy Land. Maybe it will even sport the same daring alliteration.)

It is a busy Tuesday afternoon at Jewish Inertia magazine. The phone rings and I hurriedly answer,

Taglit Birthright Israel is a bit like your crotchety old uncle. He has a certain way he wants his coffee made (lots of milk and sugar), his pajama pants folded (with the seam turned inward) and his paper delivered (on the porch, not on the lawn). Well, so does the Birthright system.

At first it sounds pretty simple. Assuming you're eligible (that is, you haven't lived in Israel when you were twelve years or older, you haven't spent a year there, haven't served in the army and didn't travel there on an organized program) you are offered the opportunity of a lifetime. You get a free ten-day trip to the Holy Land!

But that's before they mention the providers.

Who, you ask, are the holy and sanctified providers?

Why, they're all the different people who run the trips. There's not just one Birthright program, oh no. There's Hibba, Maayanot (Chabad), Israel Outdoors, Sachlav and all sorts of other fun program-runners. Then there's the Anonymous Jewish Organization's program, which is entitled 'Israel Free Spirit.'

What makes the Anonymous Jewish Organization's program unique and different from any other program? For that, you'd have to check out their nifty Facebook page which uses alliteration and acrostics to illustrate the awesome that is our program.

Anyway, we obviously want to make people aware of our program and the benefits that it has. So I volunteered to hand out flyers at NYU to prospective participants. Urban campus, fun people and diversity? I'm so there.

So I carefully dressed myself as a student (white Hollister sweatshirt, casual grey skirt and sneakers), threw on a backpack and took the train down there. Started out at the Bronfman Center, where I met all the folks leaving after Shachris, including quite a few people whom I knew. They recommended hanging out outside the library (it's called Bobst, which made me smile a lot) and going to Weinstein, which houses the kosher cafeteria. So that's exactly what I did.

Things you discover when you stand for five hours handing out flyers:

-Many more non-Jews than Jews find the idea of a trip to Israel to be fascinating
-There are nice people (petite, with spiked black hair, wearing an apron and black jeans) who offer you free haircuts when you offer them free trips to Israel
-There are people who respond to your question, "Want to go to Israel?" with "I wanna go to class" and just make you laugh
-Just outside Bobst is the official smoking area so I was scented with the wonderful aroma of cigarettes for the rest of the day
-Friendly people tell you they've already been to Israel and they wish they were eligible to go again
-One person gritted his teeth and glared at me and spat out "Palestine" when I asked him if he wanted to go on a free trip to Israel

And then for the conversation that takes the cake.

Me: Do you want to go to Israel?
He: Can you still go if you convert?
Me: (starts laughing)
He: No, I'm totally serious. I really love Judaism and want to convert.
Me: Then yeah, I think you can go if you convert. But you shouldn't convert just to get a free trip.
He: Where do I go?
Me: For what?
He: To convert.
Me: Um...well...have you heard of the Bronfman Center?
He: No.
Me: Well, why not start by going to 7 East 10th Street and meeting with Rabbi Sarna? You can see how things go from there.
He: Great, thanks!

All in a day's work.

My name is Olivia. It's also Chana, which is why posts to this blog from me will be signed as 'Chana.' I like to read, write, sing, dance and daydream. I'm engaged to be married to a Hasid. In the course of the past three months, I've attended Leadership Boot Camp at Camp Dora Golding, been hosted at the Stamford Hilton, visited Rutgers and handed out flyers at NYU through the Orthodox Union. At the moment, however, I'd like to tell you how I got my job.

It was a beautiful day in Upstate New York. Current Regional Director of Har Sinai (as Dr. Luchins bids me call it) Marc Fein and I were driving back from a Shabbaton. Marc was asking me to dream big. If I could do absolutely anything in the world, anything at all in order to help with projects, ideas or growth of our NCSY region, what would I do? What suggestions would I make?

"Take them all to Israel," I replied promptly.

"Good!" Marc said approvingly. "What else?"

I thought for a moment. I had had somewhat of an unconventional education, seeing as the last two years of my high school career took place at North Shore Country Day School. (You see, I had begun high school at a Bais Yaakov. Uniforms, single-sex girls school, absolutely no attendance at anything coed, including NCSY, the whole shebang. It didn't work out so well.)

"Well," I said, "I think that NCSY should be more like my high school."

"What do you mean?" inquired Marc.

"My high school's pretty smart. They decide to stay in touch with me by sending me candy. Every Halloween and Valentine's Day I get chocolate in the mail alongside an annual giving form. Now, since I'm 21 years old and barely paying my rent, it's not like I can really afford to give them any money. But I remember the chocolate, so that if I were ever to come into some money, they'd be the first on my list. It's like the Hare Krishna technique."

Marc looked puzzled. I decided to elaborate.

"See, Hare Krishnites used to hang out at airports with flowers. They would give flowers to people. After you accept the flower, the person asks you if they could have a moment of your time. Since you already took the flower, you're more inclined to say yes. It's the same concept. My high school sends me chocolate every single year. When they ask me to consider contributing to them, I think, you know what? Why not? They gave me candy."

"So you're saying NCSY should send candy to people."

"Precisely. We should follow up with our alumni when they are in college and send them candy, maybe on Chanukah and Purim. Firstly, because they are our alumni and we care about them and it's nice to get candy. And secondly, because it can't hurt if they decide this was nice of us and give us more money to plug into more programming for our kids."

Marc requested that I write all this up in an email. I did so. A couple of months went by. Then Marc called me up one day.

"Are you still looking for a job?" he asked.

"Yeah," I answered.

"I think you may have one," he said mysteriously. A couple minutes later, Scott Shulman, head of our Birthright Israel trip at the Orthodox Union called me up and asked me to come in for an interview.

Unbeknownst to me, Marc had forwarded my email to Rabbi Dave, the head of Alumni Connections, alongside my resume. They liked my ideas and as it happened, they were hiring. So they called me up, I came flying down on the subway (the A to the 4 or the 5 and then get out at Bowling Green) and voila! A couple of interviews later, and I was hired.

This all goes to show that one never knows what can come of casual conversations during car rides. And that Marc is awesome.