My Interesting Israeli Summer

What makes my summer vacation so different from yours? Probably the vast amount of time that I spend entertaining my 5 boys.

Once upon a time, many years ago, my husband and I made the life-altering decision to get rid of our tv, for idealistic reasons. We’ve never looked back. Internet use is also very limited in our home.

The lack of a tv is refreshing, but it does present a constant challenge during the school year- how to keep the boys occupied if I can’t just plunk them down in front of a screen for an hour or two in the afternoon? This challenge is augmented during the long summer vacation when there is “nothing to do”. You see, unlike my American friends, I do not sent my kids to overnight camp or even to a day camp during the summer for the simple reason that such luxuries do not exist here in my ultra-religious Israeli community. Yes, that’s right- no camp!

So how do religious Israeli mothers ‘cope’? Especially women with 09-17:00 jobs? Some rely heavily on Saba and Savta’s babysitting services, while others rely on Abba. (Full-time Kollel Torah-scholars get the same three weeks off as their yeshiva-attending sons during the Jewish month of Av.)

But what happens when Saba, Savta and Abba all work full time? My husband Yossi for instance, is the CEO of a large online Judaica store called Ajudaica.com.

He spends long hours in the office every day doing the many tasks that come with job of running a business- dealing with Judaica artists and suppliers, customer fulfillment, problem-solving.

Luckily, I stopped working 9-5 in an office years ago, and am not the official Israeli army t-shirt designer for Ajudaica, which I do from my home office.

When “Bein HaZmanim” (the way to say “summer break”) begins, I take a little hiatus from my job and go full swing into my honorary title of camp director/councilor/entertainer/play director/arts’n’crafts teacher etc… Years ago, I used to become frazzled when “Bein HaZmanim” began. I would take my kids out to play in the park for hours on end while I grew restless sitting on the bench.

Now it’s all changed. I plan out every week of the vacation way in advance. The boys and I think up ‘themes’ for each week, and then we split the theme into interesting activities each day.

For instance, my boys were very interested in animals one year, so we split their three week vacation into three themes: 1- sky animals, 2- land animals, 3-water animals. Then each week was split into: 1-discovery, 2- arts’n’crafts’ 3- a forage into nature, 4- a little skit, 5- more arts’n’crafts! I cannot adequately express how beautiful and smooth our summers are now, that every day is planned out way in advance. We of course wake up really late (yay!) and do everything in ‘slow’ mode, but now that we have the comfort of knowing that our afternoons are planned, all the stress has been removed from the summer break and only the fun remains…

At the end of the summer, I’m exhausted, yet refreshed and happy that I spent so much quality time with the kids.