Summary: Educators, lawmakers, parents, and others are trying to do more to help rather than punish preschoolers with the most extreme behaviors. The goal: Prevent expulsions from preschools and day-cares and make life easier for both parent and child.
Three daughters of rabbis startled me with their revelation in this spring’s Lilith magazine that each was okay with the idea of never marrying someone Jewish. The three 20-something women are passionate about their commitment to Judaism. They just do not think they necessarily need a Jewish partner.
Being Jewish is “internal,” the young women say. Agreed. Yet, being Jewish is also external. We are part of a bigger community. I was raised in a non-religious home in towns with few Jews. I dated non-Jews into my 20s. Then, in … Continue reading
Summary: In 2003, I am a 39-year-old single newspaper reporter in Dallas. I refuse to consider becoming a mother on my own. Instead, I wish for what seems out of reach. Love, marriage, then baby. I wrote a post a few years ago by request for the website for a book called Three Wishes: A True Story of Good Friends, Crushing Heartbreak, and Astonishing Luck on Our Way to Love and Motherhood. Below is a link to the piece.
All it took was some pocket change. In a brief moment, our rabbi connected to our 2-year-old this past Shabbat. Our toddler had no idea that tzedekah meant charity. But he loved it when our rabbi pulled out a handful of change from his pocket, and let Simon pick out coins and stick them into a tiny slit in the box. One by one.
Rabbi Howard Jaffe, a towering man with a booming voice, showed the softest of hearts. No words were exchanged. It did not matter. It’s all about … Continue reading
It was, as the host billed it, a night to “eavesdrop” on a pair of well-known authors. Tonight, I sat among just 25 people at a Newton, Mass., coffee shop as author Elinor Lipman quizzed fellow novelist Anita Diamant about her new book, Day After Night.
Jbooks.com, an online site about Jewish books, brought the two Jewish authors together after hearing that Lipman, author of many beloved novels, was besotted with Diamant’s new work.
My eyes welled with tears. I did not know this woman mentioned in our community newspaper, but her effort to remember her late brother moved me. Victoria Arthur, a pediatrician in Lexington, Mass., will run the Boston Marathon this month in memory of her brother, Peter, who died of a heart attack at age 32.
We can run a marathon, we can say a prayer, we can write. There is so much we can do to keep the spirit of a loved one alive. Today and tomorrow, many Jews … Continue reading
Simon squirmed in his high chair as the Seder began. Then, he grabbed forks and spoons and clanged them together. Chagrined, I looked over at him. The woman next to me whispered not to worry. “You shall tell your children,” she reminded me. The Hagaddah, after all, urges us to tell the story of Jews’ freedom from slavery to our children.
But I sat there wondering what constitutes “telling” our children if they refuse to listen.
Our first-night Seder was a tiny affair –for our family of three. My expectations for the night were simple: Give our 2-year-old a toddler-sized taste of Passover.
In an entry on her blog, Cantor’s Canvas, Cantor Sally Neff of Temple Beth Torah in Upper Nyack, N.J., takes families to task for devising “pediatric Seders with puppets and songs in English.” She contends: “We are changing the Seder culture for our children in order to make it more fun, and it isn’t working at all.” I beg to differ.
Sometimes, you find the Jewish community where you least expect it. Today, my 2-year-old in tow, I went to our favorite kid-friendly grocery store, Wilson Farms, where Simon knows he can see Belle the Llama and pens of clucking chickens. On rare occasion, we see people we know.
Today, Wilson Farms was the place to be a Jew. I ran into a congregant from my temple and exchanged Passover greetings with her and her daughter. A while later, I accepted a hug from a friend and a greeting from her husband … Continue reading
Put three rabbis from different streams of Judaism on the same panel. Ask them to talk about keeping Shabbat and Kosher. They have fewer differences of opinion than one might expect.
The rabbinical trio of Lexington, MA spoke last week at Temple Emunah, a Conservative congregation, for the fifth annual Lexington rabbinical panel. The conversation about how to live as a Jew in the modern world was enlightening and for me, occasionally guilt-producing. I attend Friday night services sporadically. I mark holidays in a minimalist fashion.
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