In the midst of the ongoing pandemic, Rabbi Sherre Hirsch, chief innovation officer at American Jewish University (AJU), noted, “It is so easy to be literally drowning in sorrow and anxiety and frustration.” However, she added, “There’s some level on which the [Jewish] tradition is demanding that we balance the intensity with joy.”
With that mission in mind, Hirsch hosted a virtual sit-down on Oct. 1 with Stacy Katz, co-inventor of the family-friendly card game Not Parent Approved. The two also happen to be fast friends. They first met at Camp Ramah, the Jewish summer camp in Ojai, when they were 12. Their conversation was streamed on B’Yachad Together, AJU’s 6-month-old online platform for learning, living and entertainment.
“We’re trying to shine a light on the amazing things that Jewish people are doing in the world and bring that to the world,” Hirsch said. Notably, 20% of the 10,000 individuals who have tuned in so far to one of the 150-plus programs on B’Yachad Together are not Jewish.
The story of Not Parent Approved, which is marketed for ages 8 and up and sold exclusively on Amazon, began in 2015. Katz’s son, Bailey, was 7 at the time and in third grade. According to Katz, a Los Angeles native who lives in Westwood, she and Bailey were attending a back-to-school night at his elementary school. “It was just chaos,” she recalled. “I said to him, ‘The one thing you can’t do is run away.’ What happened? He ran away.”
The punishment Katz doled out will be familiar to many parents. She banned Bailey from screen time for an entire weekend. But she didn’t ban playdates. She ended up taking Bailey and his friends to what she described as “an avant-garde board game store” and spending $70 on various games. “I realize the irony of spending $70 on a punished kid,” she said.
“[We’re talking about] how camp and those silly, joyful, powerful experiences of camp can be transcendent and worked into your Jewish holidays. This moment is begging us to go back to our playful selves.” — Rabbi Sherre Hirsch
Back at home, it took the boys a good 15 minutes to learn the game rules, she recalled. “At minute 20, they were throwing pieces at each other’s heads and telling me they were bored. Offline games could not compete with the allure and instant jolt of screen games.”
Though hardly steeped in game design — Katz is a public relations professional specializing in consumer technology — she decided to try to come up with a better game, “something that will please an 8-year-old, 15-year-old, Grandma and yourself,” she said. However, she also wanted something that kids could play without adults, with straightforward, quick-to-learn rules and no complicated board or parts.
Katz then partnered with game producer Maximina Revis, and in 2016, following a successful summer Kickstarter campaign, Not Parent Approved launched on Amazon in time for the summer holidays.
Katz said her time at Camp Ramah informed the game. “I wanted to capture that silliness, that naughtiness. We call it inappropriately appropriate.” The game, for example, begins with a “burp off,” either real or fake, among the players, to see who earns the title of “burp boss” and who gets to draw the first question card.
Though perhaps stopping just short of burp contests, it is that carefree spirit and tapping into it that Hirsch kept coming back to in her conversation with Katz. “[We’re talking about] how camp and those silly, joyful, powerful experiences of camp can be transcendent and worked into your Jewish holidays,” Hirsch said. “This moment is begging us to go back to our playful selves. Even if you don’t feel like it, almost acting as if.”
In addition to playing games, Hirsch and Katz pointed to music as a good way to tap into joy. Katz often lets her son choose the music, even though she doesn’t necessarily share his musical tastes. Hirsch, meanwhile, said her family makes playlists for every holiday. Usually, it’s her “musicphile” daughter, Alia, who heads up that effort.
Katz suggested allowing each person to bring one thing that might provide fun and stress relief into to the sukkah or to the holiday table. That’s especially important now for kids and teenagers stuck at home who have “so little autonomy.”
“Just even having the intention to please bring me a moment of levity in this bananas world,” she said. “It’s an important value.”
Hirsch concurred. “So much of Sukkot, especially, is about intention,” she said. “What direction are we putting our heart in as we do these mitzvot of building a sukkah and building a lulav and shaking a lulav and etrog, which in itself is so silly.
She continued, “I think the sukkah is staring at us literally from the backyard, saying, ‘You know what? You just built a hut in the backyard in the middle of a pandemic. There is nothing sillier than that, in the middle of Westwood.’ ”
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