Benjamin and the Silver Goblet
February 2009, PJ Library Newsletter
It's hard to imagine a more dysfunctional family than Joseph and his brothers, the Biblical characters in Benjamin and the Silver Goblet. During the years before the story begins, Joseph's older brothers have grown increasingly resentful of their father Jacob's overt favoritism of Joseph, and Joseph's astonishingly obtuse lack of humility. They brothers secretly kidnap him and sell him into slavery, telling their father that Joseph has been killed. Meanwhile Joseph is transported to Egypt where he miraculously rises to second in command and saves his country from a devastating famine in the Middle East.
Benjamin and the Silver Goblet focuses on Joseph's younger brother, Benjamin, who has taken his lost sibling's place as his father's favorite child. (Apparently Jacob has never read Siblings Without Rivalry.) The sons travel to Egypt to beg for food from the Emperor (their long lost brother), who tests them by planting a silver goblet in Benjamin's bag. Joseph accuses him of theft and announces his intention to arrest the boy. Only when the brothers rise to Benjamin's defense does Joseph reveal his true identity, and the brothers are tearfully, but happily, reunited.
Ella's reaction to the story was a stomach ache. Who can blame her? To the degree that she could follow the narrative, she was troubled by what she heard. Parents playing favorites, siblings treating one another abysmally - honestly, I wasn't enjoying it so much either. And yet, she loves the story of Cinderella. It's also the story of a parent who plays favorites and siblings who treat one another abysmally. Yet I read it to her over and over, along with many similarly troubling fairy tales, to no gastric ill-effect. So what's the difference?
I think the difference is that in fairly tales, there's no doubt about who the villains are and who the heroes and heroines are. The heroes act admirably and are rewarded, and the villains are cruel and are punished. These clear ethical messages make the stories comforting, even when peppered with witches and evil spells. The Torah is far more complex. The good guys are terribly flawed. Abraham lies. Moses has a nasty temper. Miriam gossips. Jacob plays favorites. There are no simple morals at the ends of these stories - instead we have volume upon volume of rabbinic commentary.
I don't consider the Torah to be literally true, but I do believe there is truth to be found within it. While I'm still struggling with how to share the rich, and sometimes thorny, stories like these with my children, I learned a lot from the Joseph narrative. Siblings fight. They do it in ways that we, their parents, may find disturbing. (Although Zoe's stealing Ella's Legos right off the tower she was building seems refreshingly benign compared to selling a brother to an international slavery ring.) But just as they create their own struggles, they also find their own solutions, which will rarely resemble the ones we would choose. Jacob didn't stand over his sons with gritted teeth, saying "Apologize to your brother this instant." If he had, I doubt the story would have ended with eleven men locked in a tight embrace - it certainly never does in my house.
My children are neither evil witches nor perfect princesses. They are real kids, who are in turn gracious and churlish; generous and stingy; easygoing and tempestuous. Consequently, I suspect I may learn more about them in the pages of the Torah than in Grimm's Fairy Tales.
Reading Between the Lines:
Joseph Had a Little Overcoat
January 2009, PJ Library Newsletter
Here's a newsflash - I've been thinking a lot about the economy recently! It's hard not to, of course. Who hasn't been touched by the recession in one way or another, and who isn't at least a little worried?
As with many things I worry about, I haven't broached the topic with my children. If I'm anxious about something, I'm pretty certain that I'll make my children anxious when we discuss it, even if I smile brightly and sound as if I'm ending every sentence with three exclamation points. Plus, they are still a little vague about how money works. Zoe, my three year old, considers it something to savor on her tongue like a truffle, while Ella has a slightly more sophisticated understanding of commerce. She thinks she should pay me to give her chores to do.
While I absolutely don't want my children to worry about money, I do want them to develop a sense of how blessed we are, and that although we don't have much, we have plenty. When my husband, a high school teacher, and I decided that I would give up full-time work for our daughters' early years, we knew our finances would be tight. While Ive never said aloud to my children "We don't have the money for that," they do see evidence of thrift in our day to day lives - that I will shlep to a grocery store the next town over to stock up on a good deal; that many of their clothes are "handy-downs"; that leftover rice goes into rice pudding or fried rice, not the disposal (or even the compost pile); that Hanukkah does not mean towering piles of presents. I've never really considered to what degree these choices have shaped their own emerging values, but last week, I had an opportunity to find out.
I read the girls one of my very favorite PJ selections, Joseph Had a Little Overcoat. In the story, as Joseph's coat wears out, he recycles the fabric into increasingly smaller items - a vest, a tie, a button, and so on, until there is nothing left but a story. Any adult will deduce from the richly detailed (and utterly gorgeous) illustrations that the story takes place in the shtetl, where such frugality was no game, but an urgent survival strategy. Yet there is no hint of sadness here - each new version of the garment is worn with pride to festive celebrations, community gatherings, and quiet meals. I asked Ella why she thought Joseph didn't get rid of the coat after it got "old and worn." I think she would have rolled her eyes if she knew how, so obvious was the answer.
"Because, Mama," she explained, only a little bit patiently, "That would be wasting. It's not right to waste. You shouldn't waste food, or clothes, or anything."
"But why?" I persisted.
Ella considered my question for a few moments. "If he doesn't want the coat," she finally replied, "he should give it to someone else who needs it. Like we sometimes give away clothes, you know, because we have so much."
For one brief moment, I couldn't resist just a tiny bit of self-congratulations. I've done something right! Admittedly, we can't take full credit for imparting these values to our children. There's our preschool, which introduced our children to the local Survival Center when they were three, and the day school, where tikkun olam is woven into the curriculum from day one. There's her bubbe, so committed to volunteerism that she served a meal at our local soup kitchen while visiting us from Baltimore, and my husband's family, who changed their annual Christmas gift swap to a shared collection for a women's shelter. Add to that our many friends who have devoted their careers to social justice. And of course, the Jewish tradition of saying brachot, which reminds us to be grateful for every bite. It takes a village to raise a child, and my husband and I are lucky to have so many like-minded people in ours.
When I was a child, teachers often asked, "What's the moral of this story?" It seems as if many children's books no longer lend themselves to this question. Perhaps one of the many reasons I love Joseph is that it is an unabashed fable, with an old-fashioned moral, imparted without an ounce of didacticism. It doesn't matter if you are rich or poor, whether your finances are secure or devastated by a Ponzi scheme, whether you live in the shtetl or a New England college town - everything has value and nothing should be wasted. What message could be more timely yet more ageless?
May we be blessed in the new year with the things we truly need, and the gift of recognizing how very fortunate we are.
Reading Between the Lines:
Hanukkah Lights Everywhere
December 2008, PJ Library Newsletter
My daughters begin asking for Chanukah books at bedtime early in the year - even before the supermarkets start piping in Christmas music, which happens, I believe, in August. Last night, Zoe, my three year old, chose Chanukah Lights Everywhere. It's not so much a story as a sweet stroll through the eight nights of Chanukah. On each night, the narrator notices lights that correspond to the number of candles on his menorah - on the second night, two headlights pull up to his home; on the fourth night, four gas flames burn beneath pans of latkes; and so on.
When we turned the page to the seventh night, we found an illustration of a house decorated with a wreath and seven red candles. Zoe and Ella both clapped their hands gleefully. "Look! It's Christmas!" shouted Ella. "Christmas? Where's Santa?" demanded Zoe, pulling the book from my hands for a closer look.
As you may have surmised, my little Jewish girls, who wear "shaine maidele" t-shirts, and castigate me for forgetting to recite the bedtime shma, love Christmas time. They don't know much about the holiday, but they know it's special and it's fancy, or at least the little-girl version of fancy, which my grandmother used to describe as ongepotchket. Twinkling lights, plush red velvet, and men with beards that look suspiciously like their father's (but more neatly groomed) passing out candy canes on street corners. What's not to like?
My own relationship with Christmas is more complicated. When I was young, being a Jew at Christmas felt like having a crush on my best friend's boyfriend. I couldn't decide whether to steer clear of all of the places where the couple might turn up (as in, everywhere I wanted to go) or to go anyway and stand wistfully by as they held hands and gushed over one another. Come December, I would sometimes avoid and sometimes seek out the places where Christmas was in full display, half-envious and half-delighted by my proximity to the glitz.
I generally go out of my way to expose my children to a variety of cultures. We've attended Chinese New Year celebrations and pow-wows; we eat miso soup, curries, and pad thai; read legends from Latin America and listen to music from Africa. But my approach to Christmas has been different. I treat it more like a gateway drug - serve a few glasses of eggnog, or turn on Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, and next thing I know, my children will be signing up for the convent.
So last year, when my mother invited us to the Nutcracker Ballet, I labored over the decision. We've explained why my husband's parents celebrate Christmas (they're Catholic) with no ensuing identity crises, but what flood gates might be opened by bringing Christmas (and so enticing a version of Christmas!) into our immediate family's lives? Would my children beg for a Christmas tree? Start writing to Santa? Demand fruitcake instead of latkes?
I'm no tyrant. Of course, we went to the Nutcracker. The day after the performance I overheard my daughters playing in the sunroom. "What do you want for Christmas?" asked Ella. "I don't know, what do you want for Christmas?" asked Zoe. On the table were several drawings of large, decorated trees. I drew a deep breath. "What are you doing, girls?" I asked, steeling myself for their response. "Oh," replied Ella casually, "We're playing Christians."
Granted, it's a somewhat unusual game. (I can't imagine what the rules are.) But it pointed out to me that my children are so secure in who they are, so completely comfortable in their Jewish identity, that being Christian to them is like being Cinderella. It's a perfectly wonderful thing to be, but it's not who they are. That's when I remembered that once I fell in love, it wasn't hard to be around my friend's boyfriend any more. My girls are in love with being Jewish; being around others celebrating Christmas can't possibly diminish their joy.
When Zoe finally handed me back the copy of Chanukah Lights Everywhere, we read the page accompanying the picture of Christmas. The narrator explains "Chanukah is also about the joy of different religions sharing a street." On these long dark nights, perhaps all of the lights we see, whether they be headlights, Christmas lights, or the candles in the menorah are illuminating a path towards peace and hope. Season's Greetings, from my family to yours.
Reading Between the Lines:
Bagels From Benny
October 2008, PJ Library Newsletter
Last month, Ella entered the Kindergarten at our local Jewish day school. A week into school, parents were invited to spend an evening in the classroom. Each teacher made a brief presentation about the curriculum, and then opened the floor to questions. After reading the daily schedule, one parent raised a tentative hand.
"Do the children really pray in school?" he asked. "Every day?"
Another hand popped up. "What should I do if my child wants to say prayers at home?"
"What do you tell them about God?" asked another.
"What should we tell them about God?" we all wondered.
Morah Chanah smiled. To her credit, she resisted the urge to ask us if we had read the school literature before enrolling our children. You know, the part about it being a Jewish school. Instead, she smiled warmly and handed us each a little booklet, entitled "Talking to Your Children About God," by Rabbi Sandy Sasso. The not so subtle, but right-on-target message was clear. "I'm your child's teacher. But you're their parents. Shouldn't you help shape your child's view of God?"
I have approached almost every parenting issue with the seriousness of a Rhodes scholar. I've exhaustively researched baby carriers, sleep training, preschools, and of course, toxic and non-toxic plastics. But I've given comparatively little thought to my job as my child's spiritual teacher. So I was both alarmed by my new assignment, and thrilled to have an instruction manual recommended by my daughter's teacher. "Hooray", I thought, "Rabbi Sasso will tell me what to say!"
Rabbi Sasso's advice? "Tell your child what you believe." These instructions were about as helpful as the assembly manuals that accompanied the IKEA kitchen cabinets we installed this summer. (They have no words.) Theologically speaking, I'm fairly clear on what I don't believe, but only have only a hazy notion of what I do kind-of-sort-of-think-I might believe (-ish). How on earth can I teach my children about God ?
Fortunately, the kind of divine intervention I don't think I believe in graced me that very week. We received Bagels from Benny in the mail. In the story, a young boy (Benny), wants to thank God for creating the wheat for his grandfather's delicious bagels. He decides to secretly place a bag of bagels in the Holy Ark each Friday. Each week, unbeknownst to Benny, a poor man finds the bagels and takes them home to eat, believing they are a gift from God. When the little boy discovers the truth, that God hasn't been taking the bagels, he is crestfallen, until his grandfather explains to him that, in fact, there is no better gift to God than helping a person in need.
After reading the book for the first time, I felt like jumping up and down shouting "This is it! This is what I believe! This is what I want my children to believe!" God as a source of creation? I'm good with that. Giving thanks for our blessings? I'm definitely in favor of that one. Helping those in need as a way to serve God? Bagels from Benny just knocked it out of the ballpark. And unlike some of the other groovy kids' God-books we've added to our library (Old Turtle comes to mind) this one is Jewish. And, it's fantastic.
Now that Ella is in day school, I realize many people are going to contribute to her view of God and religion. I'm likely to agree strongly with some of the messages she hears, and feel very conflicted about others. But thanks to Morah Chanah's advice, and books like Bagels From Benny, I'll know that I've contributed to the conversation.
P.S. Here's a link to listen to a great interview with Rabbi Sasso about discussing God and spirituality with your children.
Reading Between the Lines:
The Hardest Word
September 2008, PJ Library Newsletter
This past month, my daughter Ella received a copy of The Hardest Word from the PJ Library. In this story, a giant mythical bird called the Ziz accidentally destroys a vegetable garden belonging to a group of children. Unable to fix his mistake, the Ziz flies to Mt. Sinai to ask God what he should do. God sends the Ziz on a mission, to search the world for the hardest word to say. That word turns out to be "sorry."
When I read the story to Ella, she was puzzled. "'Sorry' isn't hard to say," she explained. "See, I just said it!" (Five year olds have a tendency to be rather literal.) The word "sorry" does get bandied about by my daughters with some frequency. Sometimes it's volunteered, and these are the moments that make my heart ache with tenderness for my sweet little girls. But more often, it comes immediately following the sentence "Tell your sister you're sorry" or "If you don't say you're sorry"(insert one of a myriad of consequences here.) In these cases, I hear one of several lesser versions of sorry, and these are the moments that make my head ache.
There's the "sorry" growled between clenched teeth. Or, the more elaborate but equally remorseless "Sorry, but I didn't do anything and anyway she started it." Or, the painfully honest "I SAID 'Sorry.' Now can I watch a show?" In other words, Ella is right. Sorry isn't hard to say. Sorry is hard to mean.
With the High Holidays approaching, I've been thinking a lot about how to introduce the concept of teshuvah, or repentance, to my children in a meaningful and developmentally appropriate way. According to tradition (or at least Aish.com's explanation of tradition), the Medieval scholar Maimonides outlined four steps to doing teshuvah.
Step 1. Stop the offending action.
Step 2. Feel regret for what you've done.
Step 3. Verbalize your regret to the appropriate party.
Step 4. Come up with a plan for not repeating the mistake.
I think what was confusing about The Hardest Word, for my children at least, was that the Ziz felt sorry from the moment he accidentally destroyed the garden. This story was focused on step 3, articulating your regret, and frankly, we�re just not there yet. We're still working on Step 2, feeling regret, because as every parent knows, without regret, an apology rings hollow, at best.
I'm not sure it's possible to teach regret. I'm not even sure at what age children are capable of this kind of self-reflection. But I do think we can teach children to own up to their actions, a necessary precursor to actual regret. And if, like me, you're looking for a book that does a brilliant job of teaching this aspect of Teshuvah, check out David Gets in Trouble, by David Shannon. No, it's not a Jewish book, but what Jewish child wouldn't identify with the impish star of No, David as he denies his way through page after page of mischief? "No, it's not my fault!" he shouts, followed by "It was an accident!" and "But she likes it!" After exhausting his excuses, David wakes up in the middle of the night, awash with guilt. And prompted by no one - not Mom, not Dad, not God - he announces aloud "Yes! It was me! I'm sorry. I love you, Mom."
I'm sure David Shannon never intended his book to be a lesson on teshuvah, but don't you think Maimonides would approve?
Reading Between the Lines:
The Friday Nights of Nana
August 2008, PJ Library Newsletter
In The Friday Nights of Nana, Friday is a day of slow and deliberate preparation for Shabbat. Nana and Jennie attend to the smallest of details - from wrinkles in lace tablecloths to Nana's favorite flowers to loose buttons on dresses. They begin working on dinner first thing in the morning, rolling out pie crusts and braiding challah. They cook soup and chicken for a house full of guests, and still find time to go for a stroll in the park at lunchtime.
The Children's Jewish Holiday Kitchen
July 2008, PJ Library Newsletter
Last week, we received a copy of The Children's Jewish Holiday Kitchen by Joan
Nathan. I've been excited about the arrival of this book. I love to cook, my kids
love to help in the kitchen, and our whole family loves to eat Jewish food. With
Shabbat approaching, I immediately opened the book and scanned the Friday
night menus for a recipe to try. Pot Roast? Nope, we don't eat red meat. Matzoh
Ball soup? It's June. Who eats soup in June? So, how about the challah? After all,
I'm very attached to the concept of baking our own.
Granted, thinking about baking challah happens a lot more often than the actual
act of baking. But when we do, I adore watching my three and five year old
daughters wrestling mightily with the dough, sneaking bites when I've turned
my watchful eye, or pretended to. (Did anyone know about the dangers of eating
raw egg when we were kids? I'm sure I ate at least two complete birthday cakes'
worth of batter in my childhood.) I love teaching them how to braid, and their
gasps of wonder each time the yeast does its magical thing. But, I already have a
challah recipe, handwritten in faded pencil on the back of a yellowing cookbook
that lost its cover years ago. Why try another? I consider the fact that Joan
Nathan has won both the James Beard Cookbook award and the Julia Child
award. I further consider the fact that whenever we bake with my recipe my
husband asks why the challah tastes funny this week. This one's bound to be an
improvement.
So, I scanned the list of ingredients. Immediately, my inner Ruth Reichl launched
into her critique. "There's honey in it?" I snarled (to the extent that it's possible to
snarl to one's self). "We never put honey in our challah. And a half cup of oil?
Way too much!" Apparently just reading another recipe was about all of the
culinary innovation I could handle for the day. I reached for my old cookbook.
Perhaps it's not fantastic, but it's the way we do it around here, thank you very
much.
By the way, don't mess with my hamentashen recipe (prune filling only, please)
either. Or my matzoh charlotte recipe, or my chicken soup recipe. Because all of
them were handed down to me by my mother. And isn't that the way Jewish
food is supposed to be made? The way our mothers made it. Which is the way
their mothers made it. Which is the way their mothers made it. Because I rely on
my mother's recipes, every Jewish holiday is preceded by at least one phone call.
It used to be that I was always the one calling. Now, as my mother prepares to
move to a new apartment, sometimes she calls me. "Do you have my recipe? I
can't find it." Whether we are celebrating together or apart, I know our tables
will share at least one dish, and it feels as if we are close enough to share a plate.
So who needs a Jewish cookbook, anyway? Well, for one thing, some of our
mothers weren't Jewish. Some of our mothers didn't cook. Some of our mothers
were terrible cooks. And some of our mothers left our lives before they had a
chance to pass on their delicious recipes. In every case, and even in none of those
cases, Joan Nathan enables us to create new culinary traditions for our families.
While she's at it, she's also taught us how to include our kids in the process, so
that these recipes become theirs even earlier.
A few years ago, I was looking through my mother's cookbooks. I found an old
and obviously well-used copy of The Molly Goldberg Jewish Cookbook. It starts
with an introduction by Molly herself, sounding every bit the 1955 Jewish
mother. "So, how did I come to write a cookbook? To make a long story....if you
lived next door, you could come and yoo-hoo me a question". And inside the
cookbook, I found our family's secret recipe for Matzoh Charlotte - an orange
flavored, very sweet, kosher for Passover pudding, that appears at every Meltzer
seder. "OK," I reasoned. "Maybe it didn't come from my bubbe. But at least it
came from someone's bubbe." However, upon reading the endnotes I discovered
that in fact, there was no Molly Goldberg. She was fictional character on a radio
show. Suddenly, our family Matzoh Charlotte recipe felt about as authentic as an
enchilada recipe from the Dora the Explorer website.
But you know what? By now, that recipe is ours. I've been eating it for almost 40
years. I hope my children will eat it for at least another 40. It turns out, it doesn't
take so long for a recipe to seem like it's been handed down for generations. So
thanks, Joan. While I don't think I'll replace our challah recipe, my daughters
may lay claim to your Easy Pear Strudel as an old Meltzer-Lepine family
tradition.
Reading Between the Lines:
Snow in Jerusalem
May 2008, PJ Library Newsletter & modernjewishmom.com
Today we sat down
to read Snow In Jerusalem by
Deborah da Costa. It's a story about two boys, one Jewish, and one Muslim, who
fight over the same white cat. After an unexpected snowstorm, the boys conclude
that they must share the cat and (spoiler alert!) her newborn kittens. Why?
Because no one can prove who saw her first, and, as the Muslim boy declares, "She wants peace." (Hmmmm.... do I detect a metaphor, perhaps?)
Let My People Go
April 2008, PJ Library Newsletter & modernjewishmom.com
When Let My People Go, a retelling of the 10 plagues, arrived at our house, I wanted some time to preview it before reading it aloud to my daughter, Ella. Still working on a narrative of Purim that would gloss lightly over assassination plots, gallows and edicts to kill the Jews, I wasn't quite ready to explain the next "They tried to kill us. We survived. Let's eat" holiday. So the book sat around, untouched, for several days - unusual for any book in our house, and especially a PJ book. But once Ella spotted the cover, festooned with wacky Egyptians and acrobatic frogs, she wanted to hear it immediately.
I paused. "Well, it says that the first born Egyptian boys
would - well, something bad would happen to them."
"What?" she persisted.
"What do you think that is?" she asked.
"I don't know," I answered. Which meant, of course, I don't know what to tell you. I don't know whether to shelter you from everything that's hard in the world. I don't know how much longer I can put off answering all of these difficult questions. But maybe, just maybe, one more year?
Reading Between the Lines:
Five Little Gefiltes
March 2008, PJ Library Newsletter
In our house, we do not serve gefilte fish. I can't stand the smell, and like many hyper-vigilant moms, I try to limit our family's fish consumption to wild, low-mercury varieties. And honestly, who isn't creeped out by the mysterious gel it floats in? So when I sat down to read Five Little Gefiltes to my children, it's not surprising that they were puzzled by the opening line - "What's a Gefilte?"
Still, I've had enough exposure to Ashkenazi culture to catch, and enjoy, all of the clever references tucked into the illustrations of Five Little Gefiltes. (My personal favorite: Little Miss Muffett sat on her tuches.) But I don't speak Yiddish. My mother doesn't speak Yiddish. My husband and his parents, who are French Canadian, certainly don't speak Yiddish. . My grandparents, who spoke Yiddish, died long before my children were born. Sure, I drop the occasional oy, and ukh. (Is that actually Yiddish? It sure sounds it.) Like any former New Yorker, I shlep my bags rather than carry them. But overall, very little has trickled into my daily vocabulary, a mere two generations after my grandfather arrived at
bravenet.com