Payback Time
As most every parent or grandparent in our community knows, preschools are the single most important innovation in Jewish family life in the last 20 years.
As most every parent or grandparent in our community knows, preschools are the single most important innovation in Jewish family life in the last 20 years.
While perhaps not as violent as the wars in the Balkans or the Mideast, the domestic wars between Jewish mothers and daughters has been painful in its own right, deeply entrenched in our psychological makeup.
The anguish of having a child reject the teachings and practices with which they are raised, troubles hundreds of thousands of parents from all cultures and backgrounds every day.
\”How could my son be a Nazi?\” Susan Yassenoff Klebold, Dylan\’s mother, said at the funeral, according to Marxhausen. \”He\’s half Jewish, and the seder is practiced in our home. He was still complaining about having to say the Four Questions.\”
When my daughter, Samantha, was 6, I got a call from our synagogue\’s Hebrew-school principal. \”Do you have a Christmas tree?\” DiDi asked.
Risa Gruberger, whose children are 8 and 9, hopes they will both grow up loving the Jewish holidays as she does. \”When the weather\’s crisp out,\” says Gruberger, \”I want them to feel they can smell it, they can taste it, that Chanukah\’s coming.
A typical seventh-grade essay might be about a soccer game, a trip to the mall or a favorite pet. But Mathew Rudes isn\’t a typical 12-year-old.
Nicholas was 7 months old when we adopted him in Siberia. Though he was born near Birobijan, the Jewish colony set up by Stalin, it only took one diaper change to see that he wasn\’t a member of the tribe. \”We must to do something about this,\” I announced to my husband, Duke, who was still in shock over becoming a father and crossing 20 time zones.
The divisions in the United States between Orthodox Jews on one side and Reform/Conservative Jews on the other have widened over the years, perhaps hastened by the increase in intermarriage, by the tendencies of the two groups to take opposing sides recently on political issues, by the demographic changes that have tilted in favor of the Orthodox.
Orel was killed at the start of what was to be the happiest week of her young life.