May 20 2013
By Keren Brown at 9:35 am
Everybody is ready to give you advice. Give them a pacifier. Put them to bed early. Learn to take care of yourself.
Most of this advice has many different sides to it and a lot of it is based on your personality. The only advice I ever needed and want to give is: Rituals. Make them happen. It is the little rituals that have changed my life. Rituals build the moments. Smaller ones and bigger ones that shape who your family is and how they interact. Read the rest of this entry →
Jul 10 2012
By Carla Naumburg at 1:19 pm
“No, Mommy. No Shema tonight.”
“Why not?”
“Nobody else does it at bedtime.”
And so it begins.
We were on vacation last week, and my 3 1/2-year-old was overjoyed to be sharing a room with three other preschoolers. Every day, she would ask again if she could sleep with the “big kids” again, and every night she bounded up the stairs to the kids’ room, eager to get into the trundle nestled between three twin beds. At which point, she got to see how other families do their bedtime routines. The other families aren’t Jewish, so needless to say, they weren’t singing the Shema each night. So, my daughter didn’t want it either. Read the rest of this entry →
Apr 27 2012
By Jessica Levine Kupferberg at 3:51 pm
Last Friday, exhausted and still jet lagged from our Passover travels to Canada, I found myself up at the crack of dawn, elbow-deep in challah dough and determined to make a challah–in the shape of a giant key! Apparently there is a custom before the first Shabbat after Passover to bake challah with a house key stuck inside of it and/or in the shape of a key. Known as “Shlissel Challah,” (shlissel means key in Yiddish), this custom is supposed to be asegulah, or good luck for sustentance or financial success for the coming year. Read the rest of this entry →
Jan 20 2012
By Adina Kay-Gross at 3:18 pm
Nothing like a ritual to wake you up.
Last Friday I paced in the kitchen of our tiny apartment, waiting for Avi and Maya to wake up from their nap. Generally, I’ll do anything to ensure that they keep sleeping (including but not limited to: blasting sound machines, forcing my husband to sit on the porch for the duration of their nap time because he makes too much noise walking around, and posting a sign on our front door, imploring delivery people and neighbors not to ring our bell). But on Fridays, we go for coffee when they wake from that a.m. nap, and I realized as I kept checking the clock on my cell phone and listening for sounds at their bedroom door, I really look forward to it. Read the rest of this entry →
