Halloween

That holiday is coming up this weekend, the one that we don't talk about in Jewish preschools but that most of the kids eagerly await... Halloween!  Why don't we celebrate Halloween in Jewish preschools even though many American Jewish families dress up and go trick or treating every year?  Is it that different from the 4th of July, or Thanksgiving, real American holidays that we take as our own? 

The answer is in the origins of the holiday.  Thanksgiving and the 4th of July are secular holidays, and the values they espouse are ones we call our own-- freedom, thankfulness, etc.  Halloween, or "All Hallow's Eve," on the other hand, has pagan origins, and was later adopted by the Catholic church.  Jews don't believe in ghosts, goblins, or hauntings, and we also don't participate in any "idolatrous customs" (like devil worship, bowing to statues, etc.!).  So we don't celebrate Halloween, at least according to Jewish tradition.
But then why do so many Jews celebrate this holiday?  Most people, I believe, separate the make-believe, costume, free candy-seeking parts of Halloween from it's pagan spooky origins.  For most of us, it's about simple fun, and has nothing to do with the pagan origins of the holiday.

I have mixed feelings about it myself.  Lena loves make-believe and dressing up, and is VERY EXCITED (to put it mildly) about being able to wear her Ariel costume in public.  I also grew up going trick or treating every year, without giving it a second thought.  My general belief is that, as long as we don't participate in the scary, haunted aspects of the holiday and make it about fun, dressing up and candy, it's fine for our kids to trick or treat and have fun with our neighbors on October 31.  I don't want to be that crazy mom who ruins the fun for her kids.

But it's also hard to separate the fun from the scary.  I found that out at the Chappaqua Ragamuffin parade this past weekend, from which Lena came home early because she was so afraid of the witches and "steletons."  We told her it was all pretend and for fun, that the witches weren't "real witches," but she responded with great fright "except for the ones which ARE real!!!"  I know on Sunday night there will be neighbors of ours in scary costumes, that houses will be decorated over the top with music, steletons, and other scary things, and that WAY TOO late at night, kids that are WAY TOO old (and menacing!) will be ringing our doorbell repeatedly for their free candy handouts, while Lena quakes upstairs unable to get to sleep.

So what to do?  I actually bought a witch's hat for myself to wear so I can show Lena that it's all pretend.  We may trick or treat very early, just in our little court.  I'll probably bring most of the candy in to give to my well-prepared b'nei mitzvah students, or even better, donate it through our preschool association.  And when Purim comes around in the early spring we will find as many opportunities as we can to go out dressed in a happy, festive costume and to celebrate that Jewish masquerade holiday.

ok ok...

As a brief response to my last post...

Josh thought it was terribly funny that the day after I last posted a box came from zappos.com with a couple new pairs of shoes for me!  Not expensive ones, I might add, but a couple more stylish items.  And I do see some of the humor/ hypocrisy in that.  Clearly some of Lena's obsession with beautiful shoes comes from her mommy (me!), as hard as it may be for me to see.  Sometimes when you see your own less-than-perfect qualities reflected back to you in your children it's hard to recognize them as your own.

So, al cheit... perhaps some of the blame falls on me (or a lot of it).  (mother's are responsible for everything wrong with their kids anyway.....right????)

At any rate, one of my new pairs from zappos is a cute pair of pointy toe black heels that I'm trying out for the Bar Mitzvah today.  Hopefully I won't fall over or get horrible blisters.  Wish me luck!

Beautiful shoes?

Lena loves beautiful shoes.  The fancier the better-- bows, shiny material, flowers, you name it, if it's beautiful she wants to wear it.  She does NOT want to wear her sensible (pink!) sneakers I bought her.  Even if she falls in her beautiful shoes because they don't fit right, or even if they give her blisters, those are the ones she wants and it's a fight to get her into the sneakers.
I prefer sneakers or flip flops myself.  Occasionally for work I'll manage a pair of comfortable-ish heels or cute flats.  I asked my mom what I was like at Lena's age and she said I liked comfortable shoes then too-- but that I didn't have much of a choice because I only had 2 pairs at a time, my sneakers and my dressy shoes.  So maybe I indulge Lena's love of beautiful shoes too much... but she also gets bagfuls from generous friends who give us their hand-me-downs. 
(So she doesn't think I'm forgetting her some time in the future-- Mikaela now likes to eat her little leather shoes.  I put them on her mostly to keep her from pulling off her socks!)
I'm generally okay with my "comfortable" taste in shoes.  I also happen to think it's totally unfair that men don't have to wear heels to look stylish, and that I should be teeter-tottering around and getting blisters on my feet to look slim and chic.  But there is the occasional time that my shoes make me feel dumpy and very “not beautiful!” as Lena would say.  At a recent Bar Mitzvah, even the GRANDMOTHER had on cuter shoes on than I did.  High-heeled little patent leather booties.  Why does it sometimes seem that everyone in Westchester dresses like Sarah Jessica Parker, at least from the ankles down??  Is my daughter going to end up wearing 4-inch heels by the time she's 13??
And I wonder, where does Lena get it from, this taste in girly-girl shoes and clothes?  Certainly not from me or Josh.  Are differences between the sexes really biologically driven?  Or does she watch too much TV?  (as an aside I realized that the Tinkerbell movies may be inappropriate for her when she said she didn’t like the costume I bought her… that it wasn’t open “down to the tushie” and didn’t have “little fairy boobies” like Tinkerbell’s real dress!!!!!??!!!).  Even Sesame Street these days has to protect its innocence, taking the Katy Perry segment it filmed out, after her outfit was deemed too low-cut.

Part of my problem with Lena's shoes I think is my apprehension about materialism and too-early sexualizing of young children.  I also don't like her falling over and getting boo-boo's all over her feet from uncomfortable shoes.  But more of it is that I want her to take on some of my values about practicality and focusing on what really matters.  I want her to understand that she is beautiful from the inside out, not from the outside in.  That no matter what’s on her feet or how she’s dressed, she should feel beautiful, or like Tinkerbell, or whomever or however she wants. 

Teaching and trust

This week's Torah portion is Lech L'cha (Go forth!), in which we read about how God calls to Abraham and tells him to "go forth" from his homeland and journey to the land that will belong to his descendants (Israel).  It's a great portion (aren't they all??), made especially famous in the Hebrew by Debbie Friedman's "Lechi Lach" song, which is the same Hebrew text but in the feminine form.  Lech L'cha is a portion about trust, about faith in God, and about new beginnings, for an individual and the Jewish people. 

On Tuesday evening I was rehearsing this weekend's b'nai mitzvah students up on the bima, and as each of them chanted their portions beautifully, I heard another voice in my head, the voice of a former student of mine.  I couldn't figure out who it was, though.  I'd heard that portion before... but someone chanting in different voice.  A boy? A girl? Someone I clearly had worked with because I heard his or her voice so vividly in my brain.  That was Tuesday and today is Thursday and the voice has continued to bother me, because I can't place it. So, after putting the girls to bed I logged onto my work computer and pulled up last year's b'nai mitzvah list.  Nope, I didn't teach Lech L'cha last year.  Pulled up the 2008 list.  Found it, it was B**!  The sweet sweet boy I worked with and got to know two years ago as we studied together for his Bar Mitzvah.  The same boy who I saw a few weekends ago at another service and couldn't believe his transformation into a 10th grade young adult.  It's a testament to our teacher-student relationship that after two years I still hear his voice chanting that same portion from Lech L'cha.  I wonder if he remembers his portion as well as I remember him chanting it!

Lena has great teachers in the 3's this year, she talks about them all the time and looks forward to seeing them each morning at preschool.  She thinks of things that she wants to tell them.  And when I talk to Ms. Berenson she certainly tells me how Lena has a whole lot to say in class!  Besides checking in with her teacher every once in awhile, the occasional newsletter, and odd comments from Lena about what she did in school that day ("Hallie was sick!"  "I fell off the dinosaur and ate dirt!"  "Ms. Weiller had to go to a meeting so the short lady came in!") it's hard for me to say what she does there.  I'm sure she's having fun because she wants to go in the morning, but I'm trusting her teachers that they're giving her a nurturing, caring environment in which to play, grow, and learn.  I'm hoping that she's being a good friend to the other kids, playing nicely, and not hitting other kids or doing incredibly crazy or embarrassing things!  But I'm finding that it really does take a lot of trust in the school and the teachers to just let them take care of my child.  I know that trust is well-placed but sometimes it's still hard!  I suppose it's all about a gradual separation, a letting her "go forth" on her own into the world.  Right now it's just the morning, and we drop her off and pick her up.  Pretty soon it'll be the school bus... and then driving herself?  College?  I can't even imagine it.

I certainly don't recognize the Torah portions of all my former students or hear their voices chanting in my head 2 years later.  But I hope in my tutoring that I make them feel that they belong to our community and have a real, live connection to the synagogue.  Someone they and their parents can trust.

And in some of their eyes I see the future of my children 10... 13 years from now studying their portions, too, and standing up in front of the congregation leading everyone in prayer.  But I don't want time to go that fast!!!

Where have I been????

Hi there, long time no blog.  I looked at the date of my last posting and am somewhat embarrassed!  Well it's been an eventful 7 months in our family...  but now I'm back.  :)

On April 6 2010 we welcomed Davidson baby #2 into the world, a beautiful, healthy girl named Mikaela Benjie.  It was hard for me to imagine before she was born how I would love her with even some of the intensity of how I love Lena... but I do.  It's true how a mother's heart just grows!  At 6 months now she is becoming a little person, sitting up and playing, expressing her emotions, and eating all sorts of mushy solid foods.  She looks a lot like her big sis Lena but no longer almost identical-- she has her own features and style that separates her from old pics of Lena.  And now she's really starting to show her love and attachment to me (and Josh and Lena too!), which makes it doubly fun to be with her and come back home from work.  I walk in the door to hear Lena screaming "Mommy's home!  Mommy's home!!" and find Mikaela flapping her arms around with glee with a huge smile on her face that's just for me.

I'm starting to plan my Jewish Parenting classes at WRT for the year.  The theme for the year I think will be "Jewish Parenting for the Life cycle" with the first class on November 16 being about Fertility, Pregnancy, and Birth: Bris and Baby Namings.  I'm doing some research online at this great new website: www.kveller.com.  It's from the people who brought us My Jewish Learning, and is about Jewish Parenting.  I found a great article on breastfeeding by Rabbi Jill Jacobs that I related to immediately (as I tote my spare breast pump, thank you Sara Levine, around WRT looking for a private room during this construction period). The article talks about the duality of breastfeeding-- both as a miraculous way of feeding your baby everything he/she needs, like God feeds Israel with manna, and as a burden at the same time.  The rabbis of the Talmud considered breastfeeding one of the chores a woman performs for her husband-- akin to cleaning and doing laundry-- that if she had hired help she could avoid doing  (Mishnah, Ketubot 5:5).  But the rabbis also tell a midrashic story about the biblical Matriarch Sarah, who, in response to claims that Isaac is not really her son, opens her shirt and sprays milk like "two spouts of water."  All her neighbors bring their children to drink her milk, and all converts in the world are said to be descended from these neighbors  (Pesikta Rabati 43).  For more check out the article yourself:  http://kveller.com/baby_and_toddler/baby-care/breastfeeding.shtml?KVBT

Mikaela is still mostly breastfed, but as she grows and continues to eat solids and take bottles while I'm at work, I continue to think about weaning her.  It certainly would lift the burden of needing to be the one taking care of her most of the time, and of finding time and space to pump often when I'm away from her.  But I am conflicted because I love the early-morning quiet time with her, how she looks up at me and smiles, how I know I'm giving her something that nourishes her physically and more.  I doubt we will have another baby, so this is my last time most likely to experience this special relationship I can have with my baby (I'm tearing up just writing this!).  So we'll continue as long as we feasibly can I suppose.  Or talk to me again tomorrow and I may say something different about it!  It's comforting to me that the Jewish tradition seems to understand the dynamic tension present in this uniquely female art.  And, I know that when I do eventually wean her, I'll be able to ritualize the special moment as well, connecting with generations of Jewish women and children as I do so.

I'm going to try to get back to updating this blog weekly, read often and hold me to it!