Can a Jewish reporter find bliss in a dot-com world?

After working in the Jewish community for eight years, I decided to make a change. The time had come for a new challenge. And let's be honest. Visions of sugar-plum stock options danced through my head.

I got an offer from a large company with forward-thinking ideas and what looks to be an extremely bright future. After minor negotiations, I accepted.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the dot-com world. I started missing the warm comforts of the Jewish community I had come to know so well.

Don't get me wrong. After years spent working in the nonprofit world, I adore corporate America.

I loved the company's giant holiday bash, held in a painfully hip warehouse in San Francisco's South of Market district. It featured pulsing disco lights, tables brimming with catered delicacies and lots of upswept hair.

I loved the holiday bonus. I love my benefits -- matching 401(k), I kiss you! Heck, I even love my little cubicle, cube No. 5078H, located on floor 5A. Get off the elevator, make a left, a right and then 5,000 more lefts.

Oh, and did I mention I love writing and editing Web content? The odd and ever-changing Net world, which has turned the greater world on its head, fascinates me to no end. If I could, I'd throw in a line of hypertext here and link to my favorite Web 'zine.

Still, there are times I miss working in an environment where I could toss out the word "farklempt" and people knew what I meant. I miss an environment where on the rare occasion when I wore something other than jeans, my boss would ask why I was farpitzed. (Can you say job interview?)

I miss saying "Shabbat Shalom" to my co-workers on the way out the door on Fridays.

But strangely enough, not working in an all-Jewish world has made me feel more Jewish than ever.

I have, for example, become conscious of how much I pepper my speech with Yiddish. Not self-conscious, mind you, just aware. I don't try to tone it down. I just notice it more than I used to.

And I have a confession to make. If someone at work has a name such as Goodman or Weiss or Moshe Yitzhak Tzvi Finkelstein, I feel a secret bond with that person even if we've never officially met. Is that so wrong? (Said with Yiddish accent).

Don't misunderstand me. Working with such a wonderfully diverse bunch of co-workers makes life forever interesting. It also makes me appreciate where I come from. By the way, can you believe Windows 2000 shipped with 63,000 bugs? Whoops, wrong audience.

See, I'm like those Israelis who come to America and immediately seek out the Jewish community. Back home in the Jewish state, they didn't have to make special efforts to be Jewish. Here they do.

Now that I'm no longer immersed in the Jewish world 24/7, I find myself doing the same thing. I search the Bulletin's community calendar for interesting events. I've been picking up Jewish books on weekends. I go to services more than I used to.

On a recent Friday afternoon, in fact, I asked my supervisor if I could leave early to make it to synagogue in time. He said sure. On my eighth right turn to the elevator, I smiled to myself. Look at me, I thought. I have moved effortlessly from Jewish communal work to the Internet world.

Now if I can only get myself to stop interviewing rabbis for stories on Bill Gates...