The Socialization argument

No Thank You, We Don't Believe in Socialization - Homeschooling Information from the National Home Education Network

Very interesting health article

7 Medical Myths Even Doctors Believe

Frustration with Christmas in the workplace

From Brazen Careerist: Five Things People Say about Christmas that Drive Me Nuts

I actually did have people ask me if I was taking a day off for Chanukah. Of course, I had to use all my days off for all the other holidays this year...

Inconsistent argument

I have great respect for Rabbi Yitzchak Adlerstein - although I never met him personally when we were in L.A., I understand him to be a moderate person who, among other things, continues to be a supporter of Rabbi Slifkin. He is one of the regular bloggers on Cross-Currents, and usually shares very interesting ideas.

His post yesterday dealt with the question of whether there are areas which, while not being "forbidden" or "heretical", are really not appropriate to Jewish life, and therefore someone who holds these ideas or engages in certan practices would be, in his words, "beyond the pale" of normative Orthodox Judaism.

I understand his point and don't completely disagree. There's certain things that just don't have a Jewish feel to them, although generally the people involved in those things don't expect or want to be considered part of the Orthodox community. The main problem with this idea is that it is obviously subjective - who is to decide what doesn't "feel" authentically Jewish?

As someone pointed out in the comments, the answer is always going to be that the Chareidi (whoever is the strictest in practice) will always be the ones to label who will be considered Orthodox. And the areas that they label as "not authentic" will continue to be based on the increasingly strict practices that they have decided to practice.

BUT - the Torah teaches that it is forbidden to deviate from halacha "to the right or to the left." That means that just as it is fair to say that there are modern innovations or lenient practices that are against the spirit of the Torah, the same applies to adding strictures. Rabbi Adlerstein's examples in this post are women taking on roles that are not forbidden but are not traditional - community leadership positions. But my counter-example is the role of women in the right-wing world, which are certainly not traditional, of being expected to leave their children with non-Jewish baby-sitters and become the primary breadwinners?

I wrote a very respectful comment to Rabbi Adlerstein asking for his explanation. Today I was thrilled to see that my comment to Rabbi Adlerstein made its way onto Dov Bear's blog!

If Rabbi Adlerstein responds to my question I will post it here.

Jewish Identity

In Professor Jonathan Sarna's "American Judaism" course at Brandeis, we would often be asked to look at advertisements, bar mitzvah invitations, and other "artifacts" to see what we could learn about Jewish identity during that time period. One of the most interesting papers I ever wrote for college came out of being asked to write about a comedy routine by Lenny Bruce. The piece looked at things that one thinks of as Jewish or goyish - so rye bread is Jewish, white bread is goyish, etc. (There are links to this routine online but since some of it is a bit raunchy I'm not linking.) For my paper, I compared this routine to Adam Sandler's Chanukah song. (Side note: the "new" live version that they play on the radio was recorded at Brandeis while I was a student there!) I lost the paper when my computer crashed, so here's the basic idea (and yes, I turned this into a 3 page paper):

The earlier comedy routine is looking at Jewish identity through qualities. There are certain people, items, foods, ideas that are "Jewish." There's just something about them - and same for things that are "goyish."

Adam Sandler looks at Jewish identity as something you are born with. In fact, part of the fun of the song is being surprised to hear that someone is Jewish because you never would have guessed. There's also the idea of being proud that someone famous is Jewish, or glad that people in the news that you hate are not.

Something that has bothered me a lot recently is people who don't feel good about meeting someone Jewish. Here's what I mean: when I started my previous job, I was introduced to someone with a Jewish last name. I thought, "Cool, she's Jewish!" Or when you see an Orthodox family at Disneyland or on the same plane flight. Or you're watching TV and a character is Jewish. There's just a certain feeling you should get of "That's my fellow Jew." I think that innate feeling is an essential part of the mitzvah to love your fellow Jew.

What frustrates me is people who, upon seeing other Jews, immediately label why the person is different from them. And usually, along with this, they only feel positively if the person is in their "group." Otherwise they actually feel negatively toward the person without even knowing anything about them. And when it comes to celebrities, they are more interested in pointing out why they are horrible people than in feeling any connection to them at all as a Jewish person.

P.S. The latest post from Orthonomics looks at people labelling retirement as "goyish."

Chanukah

The real history of Chanukah is something that I have been very interested in since I first read about these ideas last year.

Two nice articles from Aish.com

Unsung Heroes

Glass of Gratitude

Success Story about Being Proactive

I just read this inspiring post at Ask a Manager.

I think the message can apply to both job situations and life in general. If you feel you are being treated with disrespect, especially in a situation when you know you have given 110%, you need to speak up - and then if your concerns are dismissed (as was the case for this person), you need to proactively make changes.

Note that the boss was very unhappy when she quit, and tried to confuse her and talk her out of it, but without offering any solutions to her concerns. She took the right approach to ignore everything that was said instead of engaging in a fruitless conversation or giving in. She did all this is a respectful manner, with no yelling or storming out of the office - just calmly stating that things were going to change, and that if her boss and company were not participating in making that change happen, she would no longer be giving them her energy and effort - she would spend that energy and effort where it was appreciated and adequately compensated.

Story about class parties

Since I am trying to post more, I thought I would share a "funny" story from my son's 3rd birthday in his classroom (this was two years ago).

You have to bring store-bought food. (I imagine that is the case at any frum school.) So, instead of bringing DH's excellent baking, we brought cupcakes from the kosher bakery. (Very expensive and not that great-tasting, by the way.) Well, the daughter of the family that owns the bakery is in my son's class - and she announced, "My daddy made these cupcakes!"

Birthday Parties

Ever since my kindergarden class ran amok through my parents' house at my 5th birthday party, I was part of the majority of people at my school whose parties were at a location. Some I remember attending were ice skating, miniature golf, Chuck E. Cheese or other restaurant, or gymnastics. In my son's class, the popular locations are Little Gym and similar locations at which the entire center is a party place.

While I know these are enjoyable and (if one can afford them) it is a real treat for the kids, I have to say that I really prefer the low-key parties that most of our close friends here give for their kids. The parties generally include a craft, homemade games, free play, and cake and milk. Many of the parties are in the basement to decrease the mess to clean up. The party we went to yesterday included half an hour of playing in the family's backyard.

What I also love, and I don't know if this is widespread, is that generally the whole family is invited to these parties. This makes it less work for the hosting mom, and more community-oriented. It also sets up a situation where the kids are used to the idea that their parents are still part of their life, not just the chauffers.

One other thing that is different than when I was growing up - the kids generally do NOT open the gifts during the party. This eliminates comparing gifts and opportunity for nasty remarks. (Of course, the parents need to remind the birthday child to say thank you to each guest when they leave, instead of during gift opening time, and to send a specific thank you note afterwards.)

Cutting Costs - Food

Sorry for the delay in continuing my posts (assuming anyone is still checking...)

Because kosher food tends to cost more, and food is such a big part of one's budget, it seems that this is the first logical place to re-examine costs. Again, this is following the idea presented by SephardiLady of looking for ways to save money wherever possible.

1. Expand your range of "acceptable" hechshers. Do your own research as to why there is or isn't an issue with hechshers you aren't familiar with. Don't just rely on your next door neighbor telling you "we don't eat that." There is a major hechsher in our area that is found on supermarket bread. If you don't use this hechsher, you are going to pay more for bread. And large numbers of people do not use it. We did our research through a respected rav and found out that the reasons are political, not halachic. The more hechshers you eat, the more you can utilize coupons and sales. We rely on Rabbi Eliezer Eidlitz of KosherQuest (who was one of my husband's rebbeim in high school, and according to my husband is "one of the frummest people I know.")

2. Not keeping chalav yisrael. It is more expensive, prevents you from using coupons/supermarket sales to buy the cheapest products, and is often wasted. See this week's Orthonomics post on the topic and the comments there. (One tells of a family who was spending $30 a week extra on chalav yisrael, while they were struggling to pay their necessary expenses.)

3. DH (Barak of Am Kshe Oref fame...) has posted previously about the question of whether we can change the standard of eating glatt kosher, which is a chumra, but at the moment there is no convenient kosher alternative. In the meantime, he also made phone calls and found a wholesaler from whom to get meat at more affordable prices. We got a group together to place the required size for the order. This is something one can arrange in most communities without too much effort and WITH very significant savings.

4. Compare prices between your local kosher store and other grocery sources - and buy the lowest prices. Don't buy from your local kosher shop because you feel you have to spend your parnassa giving the other person their parnassa. They are running a business - they need to compete with other businesses as far as selection, service, and pricing in order to attract customers. Also, if you happen to have a local kosher store that consistently provides food that spoils immediately and ends up in the garbage, don't keep spending your money on that food.

There is a lot of peer pressure to take on chumras for food - in other words, to limit ones choices of brands, and therefore not be able to buy things with coupons or on sale, and not be able to bargain shop. There is also pressure to buy from kosher merchants, even ones who don't feel the same need to provide quality products and polite service to those who are supporting their businesses. But peer pressure is not a reason to go into debt.

Defining the problem

My friend SephardiLady put my post as a guest post on Orthonomics, and there ahs been a lot of great discussion. I intend to write more about the specifics that I have in mind for cutting costs of Orthodox life, but something has been a block to posting. I finally figured out what has been bothering me about the original discussion on Orthonomics, and why I am having trouble writing the follow up.

As I discussed previously, the original article that started the discussion was focused on (correctly) advising people who are successful financially to not waste their money trying to "keep up with the Cohens" to the point that some people go into debt while insisting on living extravagent lives. My problem with the tone of the article, however, was that this advice does not apply to people who are not already at a high point financially.

Then SephardiLady and others responded with more practical money-saving suggestions applicable to the average person. In theory, someone who is "ok" financially, and looked for ways to live frugally, would be able to put some money aside every month so that emergencies didn't turn into crises, and so that families could live comfortably. My original response to this is, fine but why not make similar frugal decisions in religious areas - save money on Shabbos expenses, clothing, kosher food, etc. But something was still bothering me about even this approach:

The more disposable income we have, the more I will be required to hand over to two institutions: private school and shul dues. The top amount of tuition is so high that no one who isn't in the very top in income can afford to pay full tuition for several children and still have anything left over to live. On top of these two amounts, there is a third problem - you must live somewhere within walking distance of a shul, and those are always the most expensive areas of any town, even a very cheap town like Cleveland.

People who make $50,000 a year do not normally send their children to private school, and do not normally live in the most expensive area of town. And those people can clip coupons and shop at Walmart and end up living a financially secure life. How does a frum family who makes $50,000 a year, sends multiple children to private school, and lives in a more expensive area of their town get by? They go into debt. And if they manage to save $3000 of disposable income, the school cuts their financial aid by $3000. And they better not even think about buying a home to raise their children in, because their financial aid will be cut even more because they are a homeowner.

There is really no way around the fact that private school is the biggest issue here. And believe me, I love my son's school. But there may very likely come a time when we just can't do it, and we are one of many who are in that situation.

I am rewriting a lot of this post as I write because I don't want to sound as negative as I feel....Yesterday my husband and I found our dream home. It's not just a house, it felt like home the minute we walked in. The previous owner loved the home and put so much work into it, and the decor is exactly us. It was huge, and beautiful, and I want to raise my children there. But we can't afford to buy it. The person is willing to rent for one year, but then will put it back on the market this summer. We had to decide if we realistically will have the money to buy in eight months. If we don't, I can't bring myself to move into our home and then have it taken away. And, realistically, we won't have that money available because if we did make that much, we would need to pay higher tuition to the school, and if we bought a house in this neighborhood we for sure would be asked to pay a higher amount. I am very sad about this. (The only sunshine in the situation is that my son didn't like the layout of the rooms, where he would be on a different floor than we would, and he's thrilled that we're not taking it.)

Dealing with Debt - introduction

SephardiLady (author of the Orthonomics blog) is a dear friend of mine. Her blog is dedicated to addressing financial issues in the Orthodox community. She recently has been following the responses to this Yated article, in which a rabbi expressed some sympathy toward a community member who confided his struggles with debt, then proceeded to blame it on trying to live a fancy lifestyle. The letters that followed (those which she has posted with her comments) have been bringing up the reality that some people are struggling financially and not living an expensive lifestyle.

This is obviously a meaningful topic for me, and even more so after I read today's post. SephardiLady and the commentators offers an extensive list of cost-saving techniques for grocery shopping. Now, there's nothing wrong with saving a few dollars. (Unless you end up using more gas to get the savings...) And SL truly lives what she suggests - she is an expert at what she calls the "art" of coupon clipping and finding bargains. Again, this is not a bad thing. But I came away from the post feeling like the point had been lost, and that maybe there is really a lack of understanding of how serious the debt situation is for so many families.

So we have three groups with financial problems:

1. People who make enough to live normally or even well-off, but waste their money on showing off, having fancy clothes, gigantic parties, etc. This is the group that the original article was addressing. This is basically an attitude problem, and antithetical to truly being a religious person. (In any religion, I think.)

2. People who make just enough, and can end up with a better standard of living and more savings for the future by clipping coupons, bargain shopping, etc.

3. What seems to be hard for everyone to understand is that there's a third group of people for whom even saving $1000 a year on grocery costs would make no difference to the depth of their problem. This is the group pleading with the rabbis and the community to figure out how they can do all the things that they have been told are necessary to living a religious life and still have food on the table and shoes for their kids.

The overall focus of financial advice is to look at your monthly expenses and see what you can cut. And the suggestions are usually things like switching to a cheaper car insurance, using coupons, or maybe an extreme like giving up your cell phone. Now imagine the following (real) situations:

- No health insurance (My husband and I went without for over a year, and my kids still don't have. And I have a friend who went years without.) By the way, no health insurance means forgoing health care too.

- The same friend cut his gas bill - by letting his gas be shut off. So he has no stove to cook on.

- Wearing the same four outfits repeatedly to work because that's what I have. This is something that has kept a number of people from going to shul - they simply don't have even one decent outfit that they won't feel humiliated in. I'm not talking fancy, I'm talking about something that isn't torn.

- Paying only the bills that are threatening to shut off this month. Calling the company and asking what is the absolute minimum to prevent shut off. then not paying again until the next threat.

I truly hope that most people can't imagine getting to this point. I truly hope most people can solve their problems by shopping sales and similar measures. But for a growing number of people, the financial issues can't be solved with these measures.

What I'd like to discuss in the next few posts is another version of looking at your expenses. I want to look at those areas (mainly in Orthodox life) which are so accepted as "required" expenses that no one wants to consider whether they can be cut or eliminated. Yet these are the high-cost areas that would actually start resolving people's problems.

I came up with five categories to start the discussion: food, Shabbat/Yom Tov, clothing/headcovering (both men and women), simchas, and private school (AKA "the tuition crisis").

The Derech

Yesterday our family and a good friend went walking at the Arboretum. This is a huge nature center with a lot of hiking paths, called things like "Blueberry Walk." I was thinking that the set-up illustrated the issues with the concept of people "going off the derech." There are two things that people might mean when they say this:

1. There is some behavior that is negative by all accounts - using drugs, stealing, etc. In the Orthodox context, this would also include things like eating pork or purposely ignoring Shabbat. This is a genuine concern for a family and a community.

2. However, most people use the phrase to mean when someone stops following the specific way of their sub-section of the Orthodox community. In many yeshivish communities, it would be "off the derech" to stop wearing a black hat and start wearing a knitted kippah. And a lot of parents, rabbis, and schools make a huge deal about things like this. But what is the actual problem? Who cares if you want to hike on the Blueberry Path or the Butterfly Walk? And, in fact, it may actually be more appropriate to try to get different people to follow different directions. Just as hiking trails are more or less difficult, and therefore might be appropriate for different people's skill levels, people have different orientations of what works for them. Some people need a huge amount of structure, and a very formal religious life is exactly right for them. Other people need a creative aspect to their religious life in order to have feeling towards it. (When I was in Israel, there was a class where they would learn some Chassidic teachings and then sing and dance the concept, or make art projects about it. For me, this was weird. For the people who enjoyed it, they had a very spiritual experience.)

My husband also posted on this thought.

AND - right after I finished posting, I found Rabbi Gil Student's great post on a similar idea.

This is just so beautiful I had to post it

Standing Before God

Mudville

One of the things my husband and I never liked about Los Angeles was the lack of community feeling. Yes there are a hige number of synagogues, and each one is huge, but (or, rather, because of this) there was really no sense of being part of a community. Looking back, this reflects a lot about Los Angeles as a whole from my experience. There is little feeling of "this is my home town."

I grew up in a home where we were not so into sports. More importantly, my father held onto to supporting his homwtown team (Philadelphia), especially in baseball. And being in a city where you can get away with that, I grew up with absolutely no feeling towards the Dodgers as being "my team." Of course, since I wasn't from Philadelphia, my connection to the Phillies was also more for fun, a way to be close to my father, rather than genuinely caring. And it never really affected my life because I didn't run into people who were INTO the Dodgers in a major way. (We openly cheered for the Phillies at Dodgers Stadium, and the only thing that was ever said to us was when this ditzy woman said "You're cheering for the wrong team.")

My father liked to give dramatic readings of "Casey at the Bat." for those of you who are not familiar, it's basically about a minor league team in small-town America who are in the final game of the season, one run behind in the ninth inning. The whole poem describes the emotions as their star player comes up to bat with the bases loaded. The last line is, "There is no joy in Mudville, mighty Casy has struck out." This poem always bugged me. Not only because I had to sit through multiple dramatic readings, and not only because I generally don't like emotional descriptions in poems. I really thought it was stupid that their whole universe revolved around this sport. Who cares?

Then we moved to the Midwest.

Now, obviously, I don't think life should revolve around sports. And, in Cleveland, it doesn't as much as in other cities. However, when you live in a smaller city, you have a closer feeling toward your home team. You have a closer connection with your neighbors, and everyone is supporting the team, so you feel more of a community spirit. And, in practical terms, anything to help the economy is a big deal here. The best the city could come up with for a motto last year was the boring "Cleveland Plus", yet for the last two weeks there have been banners everywhere, people wearing Cleveland gear everywhere, and the radio playing "Cleveland Rocks" and "Mambo for the Tribe." Sports promote a city like nothing else.

I was just speaking about how it's good to try to understand what experiences have led people who have different views than yourself to hold those views. I definitely understand why there was no joy in Mudville.

Job Hunting and Dating

During my job hunt process, I came up with a list of things that someone job-hunting can learn from dating, and things that people dating can learn from job-hunting. I just read this great post from Ask a Manager which talks about some of these things. Specifically, how there are similar things you should do on a date and an interview.

Yesterday Jacob wrote a comment, in part, discussing the idea of having preferences when dating. I think this is a big issue that comes up in both dating and job searching. I almost didn't apply to my current job because it certainly doesn't meet my preferences. Then even after I was offered the job, I almost didn't take it. Is it a perfect job? No, there are many things I don't like about it. But - in the quality areas of boss acting professional, boss having pleasant personality, no screamers in the office, and having flexibility to take a bit of time for my family's needs - it is great.

So as I said with regards to dating - it's normal to have preferences, and try to meet someone/find a job that meets those ideas. But one should not be closed off to looking into the possibility of finding a quality person/job that may not fit their "perfect" image, but which meets the real quality issues that are important. Send the resume and go on the interview - there's no commitment to take a job you don't want, but why be closed off to receiving the offer? If a firned who knows you well tells you that they really feel someone might be a possibility for you, give the person a call and go out once. You don't have to marry them, but why be closed off from possibly meeting the right person just because they don't have your preferred hair color or dress size?

(The same goes for making new friends - Cool Yiddeshe Momma and I know a woman who narrows down whether she is willing to be friends with someone based on very particular details about their background. Then she gets upset that her friends have other friends, who she is not interested in getting to know.)

Being Nice

Just wanted to share a quick story that happened yesterday. I was in the hall and a man from another company asked if he could borrow a stamp. While he came into the office with me, he asked if I was Jewish and Orthodox. (He told me he had grown up in one of our heavily Orthodox neighborhoods.) He said, "I'm not just asking because of how you are dressed. It's your attitude." I thought it was a great example of how we are always making an impression, either positive or negative, with our actions. Obviously he had enough positive experiences with the Orthodox people he met to associate that with positive behavior. Let's all keep that in mind this year.

Puppy picture

Isn't this cute!!!!

Safety with our kids

Yesterday we had a scare that was thankfully brief - my almost-2-year-old climbed out of her stroller while we were at a community barbeque. We were involved in getting carnival prizes for my son and she had already run off when we noticed (it was probably only a few seconds that we turned away, but she's fast!)

Thank G-d we located her immediately, and we were on a campus that was not bordering a street. It was also an environment where I would generally feel the kids were safe. However, it was still very scary for a minute - and obviously would have been even more so if it was at the mall or a larger public place.

Just this morning I read this article which criticizes the less-concerned attitude that many people have when we get used to being in our enclosed neighborhoods. I know we had a possible kidnapping attempt in our own community last year - a little girl from my son's class was in the yard with her brothers and father. The father stepped around the side of the house for one minute and a car pulled up. Luckily the father ran right back and the car drove off, but the school let us all know to be careful. They also sent a warning to lock our doors (it is Midwest mentality not to be so careful about that) after several early morning break-ins.

Some of the comments on the article misunderstood the author's point and thought she was saying to never leave your kid with a baby-sitter. Obviously, if there is another trusted adult or program supervising, that is not a problem. But we need to make sure to check out the school or camp to make sure we trust the safety standards used. I know I feel very confident in our school, based on how many seemingly trivial things they have notified us about (like when my son got a tiny cut one time), and the fact that the principal frequently sends out public service announcements about safety issues. (And, of course, the fact that they are accredited by the state.) On the other hand, we have a teenage babysitter whom we love dearly but I would not send her to an activity alone with both of my kids at the same time, as I do not feel that is adequate supervision in a public place. In fact, even I try to avoid going somewhere alone with both of them!