Adventures in Mama-Land

Many years ago, my coworker’s mother was very, very sick.  She was in a coma.  I asked him his mother’s Hebrew name.  And here’s the thing that stopped me in my tracks. This guy wasn’t religious.  At all.  He knew very little about Judaism and I only knew because it came up in conversation once.  Still, he hesitated.   He said, “She’s really very sick.  I don’t know if it would be a good thing for her to live any longer.”  On some level, even if he didn’t know exactly how, he must have believed that our prayers actually work.  So do I.  But what are we talking about when we talk about prayers “working”?  About Hashem “answering” them?  And what are we asking for, to begin with? In that situation, I explained that we’re not just asking for the person to live longer.  But this is something a lot of people don’t understand – even those of us who are doing the davening ourselves. Sure, we all have that impulse...

If there’s one thing that causes hand-wringing and hair-pulling in the Torah homeschooling world, it’s choosing a siddur. It makes sense, doesn’t it? We’re passionate about educating our kids, We’re passionate about Judaism, Tefillah (prayer) is an important cornerstone of Judaism.  Therefore… The siddur we choose is critical. Hence the hair-pulling.  (or tichel-pulling, as the case may be) Complicating things is the fact that many homeschooling parents are baalei teshuvah (newly-observant) or geirim (converts), who may not know the text or its meaning and might feel insecure about sharing these things with their kids. Since my own personal favourite grown-up siddur is my Koren / Sacks siddur, I was thrilled to receive review copies of two new kids’ siddurs from Koren Publishers.  One, the Koren Children’s Siddur, is for young kids, the other, Ani Tefillah, is aimed more at middle grades and high schoolers.  The distinctive Koren fonts and layout have been...

Today on Shabbos, our shul had a parent-and-kid davening which we went to, for a change (which involved actually getting up and GOING to shul – yay, me!).  During the “amidah” there was a moment when kids could close their eyes and ask Hashem for something, which I thought was a very nice thing, though everybody was a bit fidgety by that point. Later on, at bedtime, Naomi revealed what she’d been thinking during this solemn, silent moment:  “I wished there was life on Mercury, because then you’d have your birthday every 88 days.” Then, GZ chimed in:  “I thought about blueberries, and strawberries, and cranberries!”  I tried to bring it back to Hashem by saying those were indeed some of His most wonderful gifts.  Then, Naomi came back with the second part of her “Wish to Hashem”:  “And then I thought, if you lived on Mercury, because it’s such a lucky place, people who were poor could take their net to the river and just find $100!”  GZ:  “If yo...

I thought I’d shared this already, but I couldn’t find it anywhere.  Sorry if it’s a duplicate!  This is a one-page tefillah sheet I made for us to use last year in getting ready for Yom Kippur, because I couldn’t find an English song I liked to the tune of Avinu Malkeinu to help give the kids the idea of what it’s all about.  Here’s a link to the tune, so you’ll know how the Hebrew part sounds (if a little schmaltzy). Download this and other Jewish printables from my Limudei Kodesh downloads page here (under Rosh Hashanah). For general studies printables, including science, art and music, click here .

I’m not quite ambitious enough to tackle the full Birkas Hamazon (bentsching) yet, but I wanted to create a quick n’ easy poster with the words to “borei nefashos,” the most common after-bracha (said after just about anything that isn’t bread, grape juice, cookies, cake or crackers). There are two files here:  one is a PDF “poster” your child can colour in and then it can be hung up somewhere near where the child usually eats.  It includes pictures to go along with five of the important shorashim, or Hebrew roots, in the bracha.  The one is a three-page set of worksheets including copywork in English and Hebrew and more practice identifying these five major shorashim (roots). Enjoy! To print this and dozens (hundreds?) of other Limudei Kodesh (Jewish Studies) activities including weekly parsha copywork and holiday resources, click here . For General Studies printables – including science, art and music resources in Hebrew and English, Ambleside, composer and arti...

Why the weird dates? Click here to find out!  Plumbing the depths of Jewish catechism. Judaism is traditionally long on action and short on belief.  It’s not that we don’t HAVE beliefs, but we don’t usually shout them out or, other than Shema, say it in unison. It’s been said many times that it’s possible to be a really good Jew without necessarily believing a lot of specific things.  We are not only allowed to have questions, it is the hallmark of a thinking Jew to question everything.  In most cases, it’s fine to say you don’t know about something, or you haven’t found satisfactory answers just yet. So, unlike many brands of Christianity, we don’t really have a creed or catechism – a line by line, question and answer, statement of faith used to educate children or new adults.  We are uncomfortable with dogma, for good reason, because it’s so easily abused.  That’s why I’ve always insisted that Judaism is a practice, rather than a faith....

It’s ready!  I apologize for all the keywords in the heading, but I want to make sure everybody can find out about this lapbook if they’re looking for such a thing.  I was, and I couldn’t find anything appropriate, so once again, I made it myself. For the first time, I’m including with this lapbook a “guide / overview” looking at each component and offering suggestions for how to get the most out of it with your kids. You can see more sample pages here .   Here’s what’s included: Tefillah is like… ARROW mini-book Tefillah Pocket and Cards Tefillah Times Triangle In My Siddur Matchbook Shema Eyes Flapbook Amidah Means… Accordion Book Tefillah Changes Flapbook Synagogue Geography Flag Book Open My Lips Popup Torah Tziva Popup Where is Hashem Spinner Tefillah Behaviour Flapbook Judging Yourself Foldout Book Five Types of Tefillah Amen Folding MiniBook Plus my own overview and brief explanations. Almost everything at my site is totally free!  But ju...

In the absence of holidays, I am working to put together our next lapbook-based unit.  This time, we’re going to be doing Tefillah, in dribs and drabs over the summer. Just as with this year’s big Pesach lapbook , I’m planning on “selling” this one because of the work that I’m putting into it.  The word “selling” is in quotation marks because, as before, I will accept ANY amount, via PayPal. In the meantime, I’m going to bed.  While I sleep, please let me know: What would you absolutely LOVE to see in a lapbook focused on Tefillah / Jewish prayer???  More pragmatically, what would you NEED to see before you’d be convinced to PayPal me a few bucks for it? Reply in the comments or via email to Jay3fer “at” gmail “dot” com. I’m all ears…  

Why the weird dates? Click here to find out!  And by the way – OMG, the real Adar is almost upon us!  If you know or care what that is… Other “weekly challenges” I participate in: Homeschool Diary Menu Plan Monday Music to a homeschooling Jewish mama’s heart – seeing these words on the “slate”: “Now it is tim(e) to dauvan.” I guess I’ll explain a little:  I don’t usually, but 6ws attracts a diverse crowd.  “Davening” is our daily prayers.  It takes about half an hour, and it’s actually getting longer as the year goes on and I incorporate more and more bits of the full prayer service. I’m always worried that some combination of my incompetence and inexperience – combined, perhaps, with adding too much before they’re ready - will quench the kids’ love of Judaism altogether.  This is not something I grew up with, so I’m very insecure about getting it wrong. So when I come out to find this lovely chorus drawn on the slate, their mouths...

I wrote about Tefilah Trax when I ordered the CD a couple of months ago… but haven’t followed up to say just how THRILLED I am with this product! From Tools for Torah , this CD features the ENTIRE davening, the whole thing, not  at all dumbed-down for kiddies – in fun way that I believe will encourage a real love of davening. The tefillos are on separate tracks, making the playlist HUGE – I think there are 64 tracks.  Each tefillah is sung and enunciated very, very clearly by the person Rabbi Chaim Alevsky. A note about pronuciation and nusach:  Pronunciations on the CD are all Sefardi, and in fact, the davening is “nusach Sefard” – still Ashkenazi (I know, it’s confusing:  Sefard IS Ashkenazi; Sefardi is what Sefardim use), just slightly different from what we use.  For instance (I’m listening to it as I type this), he just sang “la’asok al divrei Torah,” not “b’divrei Torah,” like we do in our Ashkenaz siddur.  The differences are mostly so smal...

Why the weird dates? Click here to find out!  Other “weekly challenges” I participate in that may or may not interest you: Homeschool Diary Menu Plan Monday Even though Chanukah is over… May the miracles keep on coming. Our friends, whose son was taken from them back in May, are finally going through a hearing over the fate of their family.  Please daven for Moishe Alter Binyamin ben Leah Rachel. Related posts and backstory: Please daven What we told the kids

In case anybody thinks I’m particularly good at visiting the sick… well, my brother’s been in the hospital for going on a month or so, and I finally, FINALLY worked up the I-don’t-know-what to go see him. For anyone reading this who doesn’t know me, here’s the catch:  it’s a mental hospital. When people hear “hospital,” they get all worried.  “Ohmigod, what’s wrong with your brother?” When they hear “mental,” they tend to sigh like it’s a false alarm.  Yeah, it’s a hospital, but it’s really basically a prison, right?  Keeping people who deserve it safely locked up until they can no longer harm anybody…so all’s well with the world. The last part is a little bit true:  all is well with the world when he’s IN.  At least for my mother.  She’s more relaxed, and the rest of us too, can know that unless he goes AWOL (like he did last week), for as long as he’s IN, we can find him and visit him on a normal schedule.  Bring him stuff, do him fav...

Please pray or say Tehillim (psalms) for Alter Mordechai ben Freida. We ask that Hashem send healing or, when healing is no longer possible, relief from pain. He is capable of miracles, but sometimes we don't recognize them when they're right in front of us. Alter’s life has been a miracle, every minute of his 25 years . But there’s no good time to say dayeinu.

I don’t even know what the news is, just that it’s bad. What do you do when a friend calls and gives you not-enough information about people you don’t know all that well anymore?  Show up at the door?  With flowers?  With a hug?  “Hi!  I just wanted to see for myself how dire things are this time!” Please daven for Alter Mordechai ben Freyda.  He’s 25, but I met him when he was 8, and he’s still a boy.  Living through his first year, and every year since has been a neis ; please daven for more time with his family, more simchas, more of the peaceful adult life he deserves after what his childhood threw at him.

This is the boy I wrote about back in October - the one who sometimes feels like our fifth kid . His name is Moishe, and I have no idea what the circumstances are under which he was removed, but I know a happy kid when I see one, and he was happy in this home. This was his foster home for almost FIVE years, from ages six through eleven. His parents love him. We love him. The neighbourhood is not the same without him, and I have no idea what to tell my kids. ----- Original Message ----- Sent: Sunday, May 09, 2010 10:56 AM Subject: Moishe Alter Benyamin ben Leah Rachel Please daven for our son's safe return. Thank you, Chana and Steve