summer is coming

It is June. End of school year is nearing or already passed. It seems like a good time to draw some conclusions, see where we are holding.

I started a vegetable garden after a long hiatus. We had wooden boards leftover from the deck construction that have been sitting for all these months. I wanted to make raised garden beds because local clay soil is not conducive to plant growth. Every simple DIY project called for circular saws and power tools. I don't own any of them. I could not manage to be around when others could help me. Desperately, after digging through my husband's toolbox and coming up empty, I went to Home Depot on Mother's Day and bought L-shaped brackets for the corners. At that point, the kids came out to "help". Then my husband appeared, drilled the holes and voila, after months, I had garden beds.

I planted some veggies and begged the kids to keep the backyard gate closed, lest the deer, rabbits and other local wildlife would eat the plants before us humans.

My oldest graduated from middle school. He is going out of state to yeshiva high school next year. I have been very careful to separate my feelings about it from his feelings. He seems to be excited about the idea. I am excited for him. This past year it felt like he was dragging his feet, not getting anything out of school. A change was necessary. Change ought to be good.

12 yo just finished the review of Beshalach today. That is four parshiyot covered this year. His Hebrew reading has improved, even though he balked at any and all approaches that I tried. Somehow, it clicked enough to be smooth enough when he is calm enough. However, Hebrew is still gibberish to him. The shorashim mean nothing. He flails in the dark, not sure what goes where.

I found a gymnastics/parkour place for 12 yo. They also have classes for 8 yo sister. It is not around the corner, but at least I found a place and signed them up. They seem to enjoy the lessons. 12 yo is especially looking for teachers that do not put kids down.

We are babysitting two geriatric guinea pigs. A friend got them from someone who was moving and then she went out of the country for three weeks. Good thing we practiced on my daughter's class pet. The average lifespan of a guinea pig is 6-8 years and these guys are 9. I feel that this is a very easy assignment: no need to bond, train, discipline, contain. Just feed the piggies and keep them comfortable. Try to keep them alive, but if they happen to kick the bucket while on our watch, well, that's old age... They are cute. The kids enjoy them. 3 yo has gotten quite gentle with them, although she keeps moving their castle houses because leaving them alone and observing them with her eyes is not an option. I am considering this a trial run for pet ownership.

3 yo is potty-training. It had to happen one day, and that day was a day before an 8-hour car ride for Shavuot. She is still working on bowel movement, but no pee accidents and dry all night. We have not shut down the pool (yet).

Speaking of the pool, we will be living there this summer. I have four swimmers! I am even finding myself enjoying pool time because there is much less watching required. 5 yo has been trained by me to swim and then his older siblings took over, especially 12 yo. He has been encouraging and working with his little brother, teaching him to dive, to swim in the deep end, and even to go down the water slide. That leaves me just 3 yo to watch. That girlie got comfortable near the water. She can stand in the shallow end of the deep pool, which was a large confidence booster. Within a few times, she started jumping into the pool, putting her face in the water, blowing bubbles and even attempting to swim in the baby pool. I sort of hope that she will learn how to swim by the end of the summer. All of this happened without swim lessons. When the kids are ready, they will try things. When the kids are gently encouraged by an adult in the water without pressure to do this today and that tomorrow, they will develop their own timeline and set their own goals. My 5 yo son was SURE that he will have to be 7 or 8 until he'll be ready to go down the water slide, and I was not so sure whether his timeline was wrong. But then he got enough encouragement and support from his siblings to try it. No, he is not interested in stroke refinement. He is interested in being dumped into 11 feet of water.

Oh, and 12 yo somehow almost finished 7th grade Khan academy math... And he is excellent with little kids. And he knows exactly the right thing to say to a child who is feeling down. And he gives awesomely sincere pep talks. If only he would apply them all to himself...

The kids are not going to Jewish summer day camps. I do not trust the leadership. I do not trust that anyone out there cares for the well-being of my children. I love the concept of a Jewish summer camp as a positive experience of Judaism, but I am no longer naive (or desperate). I wish it were not so. I wish I would get a week's break from all the kids' management. But it looks like camp Mommy all summer long. Zoo, science museums, pools and parks, here we come!

In his own words

Five year old (who spent a large portion of his young life bouncing between preschool programs): Teachers put children in time-out. That's what they do.
Me: What do mommies do? (I do not employ time-out with him because there has really not been a need).
5 yo: Mommies take care of kids. That is what they do.

This makes me sad. This is why I wanted so badly to be able to homeschool all of them, for all the years of their school experience. Oh, he is resilient, and he will get over this. But in his head, teachers are there to punish kids and moms are there to love them. I wonder how that will affect his attitude towards teachers and learning down the road.

The Outer Limits

A few weeks ago, we participated in the Shabbos Project. Originally meant as a Shabbat to encourage your non-observant Jewish acquaintances to give Shabbos a try, it seems to have taken a life of its own and now turned into a communal Shabbos celebration of "We are here. We are keeping it. Yay us!" Ok, I will admit that there is good coming out from the sense of not doing it alone, but it leaves me wondering what is lacking.

Our shul held a communal lunch where members were encouraged to share their "Shabbos at the outer limits" stories. I had one come to mind and was prepared to share it. However, I have waited for a clarification that explained that stories are to be heard by the Rosh Kollel and he will give feedback on how appropriately one acted, given the circumstances.

The stories came pouring in: wine brought over on Shabbos, electronic appliances malfunctioning, fridge lights turning on, naughty babies unplugging essential components threatening to cause major damage, menorah fire... Each participant shared and Rosh Kollel nicely explained what was at stake and how it could have been solved halachically.

I found myself feeling glad that I did not go first, and then unable to share in this format because my story seemed a world away from the concerns being voiced. I also felt that my story was not a halachic shaila, but in some other category.

I am fifteen. I have been to the States for two years, attending a Jewish high school, learning about Judaism and observance. Now, finally, as originally promised, I am given a ticket to go back to Moldova and visit my parents whom I have not seen in those two years. I am excited because I have been very homesick. But I am also very nervous: in these two years I have decided to become observant. My parents can be simply described as atheists. Now, I am going back to post-Soviet Union country in the middle of the nineties. The globalization had not reached that far (yet), so there is no kosher packaged food, no paper goods. There is no Google, internet is in its infancy. And I am going back, determined to keep Shabbat and kashrut among my family that expects me to come back and be the same person that I was when I left two years ago. I am supposed to eat my grandma's cooking. I am supposed to milk those precious two months for every opportunity to be with my parents and do what they do, Shabbos and all its prohibitions getting in the way.

I fought a lot with my parents about shabbos, on kashrut, on beliefs, on observance, on being brainwashed, on tears that this is not what they signed up for. I kashered whatever silverware they had that was all metal. I cleaned all glass/pyrex containers and plates that they had. ( I felt terribly guilty for not toveling those dishes). I became a vegetarian because there was no kosher meat, short of going to the Chabad rabbi with your own live chicken and then plucking it yourself. Besides, it was easier, kashrut-wise, for everything to be dairy and parve. I brought four cans of tuna from the States and those cans were my way to honor Shabbat. The local rabbi told us that the baguette bread could be eaten, so I ate lots of bread, vegetables, pasta, milk and dairy.

I had a list of candle-lighting times, so I knew when to light the candles. I made havdalah based on when I saw three stars. Instead of the elevator, I used the back entrance to the apartment buidling with the stairs. It reeked of urine and worse and was pitch-black for the two flights of stairs.

And I stayed away from the always-booming TV that drew me in. I used the bathroom in the dark because someone always forgot to leave the light on, or turned it off not to waste electricity.

I made kiddush and hamotzi. I spent time with my long-suffering family that was far from the enjoyable shabbat seudah that comes to one's mind. We did not discuss Torah unless I was called upon to defend it, with my total of two years' of learning.

The truth is, nobody would have known whether I kept Shabbat and kashrut when I went back home or not. I sort of wonder whether the assumption was that I WILL NOT keep it and we will all be quiet about it, don't ask, don't tell sort of thing. But I knew that G-d will know, and I wanted to be pure before G-d.

Ironically, that same summer, I had a meeting with a senior rabbi who was in charge of the program that brought Russian Jews to study in America and Israel. I showed disobedience by refusing to be a pawn and to go to a new city that he picked for me to go. I wanted to stay in the same school and with the same community that gave me the fortitude to keep Shabbat by myself halfway across the world at the age of fifteen. He was not pleased, and he was going to punish me by withdrawing the funding to continue going to the same school. I wonder how he will be judged after 120 for abandoning a Shabbat-observant girl in Moldova to fend for herself... I wonder if he also thought that I was not keeping Shabbos.

Looking back, I don't know how I did it. I would not eat nowadays by the level of kashrut that I kept at that point. I don't think I knew enough to keep Shabbat 100%. But given the circumstances, I know that I gave it my best shot.

How could I bring this extreme situation to the judgment of Rosh Kollel? How could I share it publicly when the biggest emergency meant simply finding a non-Jew to turn something on or off, and aah, breathe in the spirit of Shabbat, make a good story about it?

I sometimes wonder why my outer limits always end up so far outside of everyone else's.

How easy and pleasant it was to be in a large classroom with one student, or two, or three--even four or five. Above five was when the noise problems began. One grownup can't teach twenty digital-era children without spending a third of the time, or more, scolding and enforcing obedience. What if we cut the defense budget in half, brought the school day down from six hours to two hours, hired a lot of new, well-paid teachers who would otherwise be making cappuccinos, and maxed out the class size at five students? What if the classes happened in parental living rooms, or even in retrofitted school buses that moved like ice cream trucks of bookmobiles from street to street, painted navy blue? Two hours a day for every kid, four of five kids in a class. Ah, but we couldn't do any of that, of course: school isn't actually about efficient teaching, it's about free all-day babysitting while parents work. it has to be inefficient in order to fill six and a half hours.

Nicholson Baker, Substitute pg493-4

Trends in Jewish Education

This past week, I attended a lecture on Trends in Jewish Education, specifically targeting day school age population. I brought both boys with me (they probably wanted pizza that came with the shiur...) The takeaway was that the future of Jewish education looks more like homeschool than traditional school. There is need to differentiate, less frontal instruction, recognition of multiple intelligences and various learning styles, addressing special needs population. There is need to teach students how to learn, and how to spark in them desire to learn. There is need to build close relationships with teachers and rebbeim. There is recognition for tremendous potential of online learning, and awareness that the world in which current kindergarteners will graduate will look very differently from the world they started in.

But there is also the economic side and that is unwieldy. The speaker kept saying how the tuition is already high, and, with implementation of all these new ideas and individualization, there is no economy of scale, so the cost keeps on spiraling up.

Moreover, he quoted the principals who consider a student a success as long as they still engage with Judaism and Jewish identity in some way, be it through Zionism, advocacy, social causes, textual basis, or religious observance. Additionally, studies have shown that a 6 to 12 months stint in Israel (not a gap year which has turned into "fifth year of high school", but a self-selected program like discontinued Masa) have the same impact on the rate of intermarriage as eight years of day school.

Coming out from the lecture, 11 yo thanked me for homeschooling him, that's how bleak everything looked on the other side. However, no need to attend a lecture for that. It seems that every week now I hear of another family seeking out alternatives to day school/yeshiva. Parents are desperate: the children are not thriving, the children are not learning, the children are not accommodated, and the messages of day school are not sticking. Unlike the free public school, all of this comes with a hefty, back-breaking price tag. The parents are sincerely wondering whether all the sacrifices that the families are making to give their kids a Jewish education end up producing Jewishly-educated kids.

I kept thinking about the famous pasuk from Mishlei, the battle-cry of Jewish educators everywhere: חֲנֹךְ לַנַּעַר, עַל-פִּי דַרְכּוֹ--    גַּם כִּי-יַזְקִין, לֹא-יָסוּר מִמֶּנָּה
Train a child according to his way: so when he grows old, he will not turn away from it. It seems that the day school world is waking up to the first part of the pasuk, but they are not doing a good job transmitting values, so the second part does not work. The secret is that the pasuk was not aimed at an institution, it was meant for a parent.

I sincerely feel bad for the educators who are trying to scale up the dynamic that is meant to take place at home and apply it to a classroom of diverse human beings.

Another painful point that was brought up had to do with socialization. Aptly, the speaker did not praise highly the socialization that takes place in the classroom, but he noted that there is a lot of ostracism for those who deviate from the communally-accepted modality of education. Many homeschoolers experience it on their own skin, as do those who do leave yeshivish or chassidish environments. It seems that day school does a fine job teaching whom to affiliate with, and whom to stay far away from. The speaker noted that this behavior is modeled by the parents and rabbeim.

What trends do you see in Jewish education?

The Jewish education my kids are not getting

Being a baalat teshuva and not attending day school makes me nervous about my Judaic knowledge. I am even more jittery when it comes to educating boys. When do they start mishna? When do they start Gemara? What format does halacha learning take? What about Jewish philosophy? I don't even know what it is supposed to look like, let along teach it. I feel so inadequate, so ready to put them into dayschool or hire a rebbe, someone who knows this stuff, who can teach them.

What I tend to forget is that learning without application is worthless. Luckily, there are plenty of situations to remind me about it.

Today the kids held a "student council meeting" and decided among themselves that they want to be governed by republican democracy. Well, 2 yo objected by saying no. When 11 yo offered tyranny, 2 yo jumped excitedly up and down. Part of this new system of rule included taxation. The kids set a tax rate at 10% of their allowance, after tzedakah. They decided to store their taxes in an envelope in 5 yo's drawer (being the most responsible and the least likely to lose it). They also entered a clause about stealing from the tax fund and that was set by 11 yo straight from his mishna.

Later on today, we had an afternoon bris to attend. (The baby was jaundiced, so the bris was delayed). This is a sibling of one of their friends, so the kids were quite eager to go. As the crowds shuffled into the shul, I surveyed the situation and decided that it might not be worth it to stay for the סעודה afterwards, as it looked very crowded and I had all five kids by myself. Moreover, the boys went downstairs while I stayed upstairs with three younger ones. 5 yo asked to go down to the boys, but since this is not the building that we usually go to, I was not sure whether she knew her way around. I let her go, but then I could not find her afterwards. As I was trying to get the stroller into the corner and find a seat for 2 yo, I saw people trolling next to the food table, with the staff telling them that the food is not being served yet. I saw kids grab fistfuls of candy from the sweet table, more that any one child can eat at a time. I stopped mine from doing the same. I saw a rabbi hover around the food with the plate, trading remarks with the staff as to why he is not filling his plate yet. And I saw kids swoop in and repeatedly grab cookies from the sides, where the staff could not get them to stop.

All these kids are going to local Jewish schools, getting a Jewish education. The rabbi is a teacher in one of these schools. Yet all I saw was a lack of דרך ארץ. If the purpose of learning all those mishnayot is to pass a test and then leave them behind in the classroom, I am not sure whether that can be called education. If the rabbi teaches Pirkei Avot, yet fails to behave as a mentch, I am not sure whether his teaching means anything.

I gathered up my kids and left, not waiting to see the stampede of everyone else once the food will be opened up. I did not want to see people pushing and shoving to fill their plates. I did not want my kids to see people piling on more food that they can eat. I did not want to see the parents of the baby shake their heads and regret this late afternoon bris and the crowd of hungry Jews that were lured by a free dinner. But before I walked out, I saw the disgust in the eyes of a not religious grandma, surely produced by the less than fine behavior of the religious Jews.

My kids might be missing out on Jewish education, but they will not miss out on being educated in how to be a mentch.

books found on the couch

At some point during Shabbos, when I had to move yet another pile of books off the couch to find a place to sit, I thought: what an interesting assortment we have here!

First of all, there was Time magazine, draped over the back.

 10 yo was doing parsha question research

Both boys have read the series, but this one is from the library

My anxiety-evoking reading on how to deal with anxiety in kids.
1 yo's book, handed down from the boys.
Pajama Library book that 1 yo picked out, but 4 yo actually wanted me to read.

Boys' new obsession with Percy Jackson. I didn't think I will miss "Oh My Gods!", but I do.
1 yo's current favorite book. 4 yo picked it out in the library, 1 yo loves the pictures and the absolutely crazy vocabulary. We all learned a thing or two. Defenestration, anyone?

A friend just brought this over, and I submerged myself over Shabbos. I miss my Houston book club any time I read a great book.
This was also part of 10 yo's research, specifically, a proof of how cases are settled.

Our random book selection lead to interesting questions. 10 yo wanted to know how Greek understanding of gods  is different from malachim (angels). 8 yo asked a good question on the parsha: if a Levi is a judge, can you bring him a gift as a Levi?

My house might be messy, we have books strewn everywhere, and we do not nearly have enough book space to contain everything we own (not to mention everything I want to have accessible). I have a dedicated book shelf just for library books, in vain hope that they will not be mixed in with the rest. My kids know that I like to read, and I will make time to read to them. In fact, every time I plop on the couch, I usually have to nudge one of the boys to move his reading over so that there is space to sit. As soon as I sit down, either 4 yo or 1 yo will bring a book over. Both younger kids will spend quite a bit of time looking at the pictures, "reading" to themselves. I have so many cute moments of 1 yo clambering on the couch and sitting with the big boys, imitating reading, because that's what big boys do!

I do not know what my kids will be when they grow up, but they will be readers, and they will be people who love books.