Crowded

It’s embarrassing to have more than six people over for Shabbat dinner. Six is the Ikea fold-out table capacity; add the card table, and we fit nine. We’ve got four matching chairs and four miss-matched, and the roller desk chair. This Friday night we hosted eleven adults and three children. Yep. Four more people than we had seats for.

We didn’t mean to. People I adore accepted invitations, to my delight, and then asked if they could bring….other people I adore. Plus, I wanted to honor a friend with whom I had a bumpy start.

In fact, she’d asked to join a public pot-luck meal I was hosting last year, and I turned her away. I was already at 10 guests. I had a newborn. Though she’d been new in the community and my rejection had hurt her feelings, her kindness was undiminished. She’d proceeded to babysit the two times I needed it most, and has given me free tickets to a theater where she works.

I've never lived down the shame, and honestly, I wasn’t going to turn away any guests this time.

So we brought out the wood stool I made with my own hands in high school, and a jumbo-sized pampers box, cleverly disguised by a table cloth (until my daughter wanted to play with her “blan-keet” and revealed the ugly truth). Etc. etc.

By some miracle, everything worked out, except the main dish could have been cooked 10 minutes longer.

But what made the whole thing especially miraculous for me what that I had a sprained foot, and couldn’t do most of the prep on Friday. What would I have done without my love, who swept and mopped and cooked and took my daughter to services so I could prop up my foot and let the swelling go down and the advil kick in?

Let’s be honest, I would have managed it. But I would have been a lot less gracious (and a lot less clean). We would definitely have had a buffet. And I might have turned people away again. And I wouldn’t have enjoyed it.

Look, it’s embarrassing to have graduate school furniture three and a half years into a real job. Yes, I had a baby alone, finished, published, or had accepted for publication three books of translation and two books of poetry, and am almost done with a book of scholarship while teaching 9 new classes outside my area of specialization. You can’t do everything. Right? But having a home to which you can welcome those new in town, those visiting, and those dear friends you love, should have been near #1 on my priority list.

Lucky for me, I have a partner who is open to my need to feed people and fill the place with more love than it should (probably legally) contain. This, in my opinion, is the reason to be in a relationship—to have a partner that will help you be a nicer person.

So when we move, we are definitely getting a big table and lots of chairs. And not the folding kind, either. Grown-up chairs.

Now I just have to think about the foot injury. I don’t know how I’m going to do it, but somehow I’ll have to find a way to stop running to catch the bus in heels. Look, when you’re 5 feet tall and have baby-feeding boobs, you’ve got to wear heels if you don’t want your students looking at your chest instead of pondering the extremely clever things you’ve just said. [When do breasts go back to their pre-baby size?]

And if you’ve got a baby, you’re probably going to be running to catch the bus. That’s just life. Oh well, I figured out how to seat 14 people on 10 chairs, now I’ll figure out the shoes-bus thing.

Child Friendly in Tel Aviv

In Israel, I’m so used to random strangers dropping everything to pick up my daughter’s pacifier, hat, sippy cup in the street, that I actually got peeved the other day when a guy carrying a metal box did not stop to help me (though I didn’t ask).

I’m starting to think Kid-friendly has far less to do with the people and much more to do with infrastructure. The things that get under my skin about Israel—the slap-dash aspects, feeling that everything runs at 70%—seem somehow to contribute to its amazing kid-friendliness. Maybe it’s that people are used to helping each other out.

In keeping with Ima Shalom’s provocative blog about children in shul (and in the spirit of full disclosure: I take mine out after a vocalization of magnitude or duration), here are the child-friendly synagogues I’ve found.

It’s all about movable furnishing. In general, the more permanent and fancy the structure, the less kid friendly. For example, my favorite, is Yakar. It’s totally worth the 45 minute walk because I CAN DAVEN. My daughter can wander into the men’s section, walk around the Torah scroll, pat the diaphanous material of the mehitzah, and everyone in the room knows where she is at all times. I just have to turn my head, and someone points to her. If she feels the need to vocalize, there’s a TOY ROOM about 3 steps from the women’s section. And there is a family with 3 daughters who never tire of carrying mine around or watching her. They’ve got a children’s half-hour during Haftorah, but my girl just wanders in and out of that.

It’s heaven.

The rabbi once pulled me aside to tell me that I’m welcome to come to any weekly shiur. He said he assumes that to open a class to women is to welcome children as well. I tried hard to suppress an image of women spontaneously mass reproducing in class (He was being welcoming, not sexist…..because I’m a single mother and he knows I don’t have a husband to watch her while I go off to learn…).

Another good one is Ichud Olam which is on Ben Yehuda, and is only 25 minutes from me. But here’s what I mean about infrastructure. It’s really better if your children don’t yet walk, or if they have reached 1. the age of reason or 2. the age at which you can let them play with other kids unsupervised for up to 15 minutes at a time. Because, for some strange reason, the décor consists of wooden boxes FILLED WITH ROCKS.

I spend 3/4 of my time in the courtyard, holding a child convulsed in tantrums because I’m not letting her eat/throw/make pretty music with the rocks, and I won’t let her eat the month-old bamba, bissle, and other delicacies other children have hidden under said rocks.

It’s a pity. The shul is full of young, hip and happening people who have fabulously interesting lives and family backgrounds, lots of energy and enthusiasm, super commitment to the Jewish community, and such wonderful, kind personalities that you don’t hate them. It’s half European, and a quarter American and a quarter Israeli.

A third option in Kfar Saba is the Carlebach Minyan on Bar Ilan Street on Friday nights. Get there early for a seat. Why? Because if you sit on the last row, you’ve got about 20 14-year-old girls who are wearing simple, yet fascinating jewelry, and who’ll take turns holding or playing with your child while you daven. Plus, the beat is nice, and baby can dance dance dance.

Silly Sweet Shabbat

Abba and I are big on trying to instill an intense love of Judaism in Chamudi from an early age.

The most important part of this, I think, is a love of Shabbat.

Shabbat in our household is a day of sweetness. On Shabbat Chamudi gets juice, cookies, and cake. He gets to go to shul and see all his friends and sing silly songs and do fun dances. He gets to play with Ima and Abba a whole afternoon without interruption. It's a special day.

And he's starting to get it. Last week he started repeating the expression "on Shabbat" back to us and so we shifted into high gear. We'd eat the challah, we told him, "on Shabbat." We were buying new shirts to wear "on Shabbat." And on and on, clear through Shabbat day.

So imagine how happy I was at shul when he started wishing people "Hi Shabbat!" So cute. And on Monday, when he brought me the silk challah cover I had failed to put away and declared "on Shabbat," I knew that he was really beginning to understand.

I think our little love campaign is working. At cookie minyan this week, our just-barely-verbal little boy was asked what he was thankful for this week. He pointed to the big crate of stuffed Torah's and proudly proclaimed: Torah! Our jaws dropped. We were so proud!

Chamudi is only 1 1/2, and the adventure has really only just begun. No sooner did he learn the concept of "on Shabbat" than I found myself noting offhandedly things that we'd have to miss because they are "on Shabbat." So perhaps our biggest challenge will be teaching Chamudi to love the negative commandments as well as the positive ones.

But for now I am happy with the simplicity of our Shabbat sweetness, and the happiness that we find together "on Shabbat."

Shabbat Shalom/Merry Xmas

This Christmas morning was just like any other. My 3year old cries from bed. I go get him. I change his diaper (that is for another very long post) and then I take him into bed with us.

This morning, he lies down for a few minutes, then perks up.

"Ima, is it Shabbat?"

I am befuddled.

"Why?" I ask, knowing why.

"Is it Shabbat?"

"No, it's not Shabbat. Why?"

"Can I watch TV?"

So yes, my son got the sense that it was a special day, a day off, a day to play and be goofy and relax. Ahhh, a special holiday. Not Shabbat. Christmas. Oh well. Being a New York boy, he thinks that Christmas trees are something that you can only find in building lobbies (which is FINE with me).

And so, we were treated to an extended viewing for the zillionth time of Dan Zanes and Friends on video.

What a way to wake up.

Stop Looking at Me Like That

I'm having a recurring problem with our rabbi, a man I generally like and respect.

Sometimes I make the decision to bring my 13 month old Chamudi into services. Maybe I want to hear the drash. Maybe I think that he ought to see what Shabbat services are like.

Whatever the reason, sometimes I stay, rather than retreating to the children's program or some other Chamudi-rated setting.

And then, it happens. Chamudi gives out a yell. Not a full-on tantrum, but a yell or two because he wants my siddur or to steal my glasses or just to hear his own voice.

And the rabbi gives me a dirty look.

I tried to ignore it the first time, even after an amused friend caught and commented on it. And maybe even the second time.

But the third? Come on.

I'm not easily cowed, and I'm going to continue to bring the baby to shul on Shabbat. But one more look, and Rabbi is getting a talking to. No kidding.

I've already complained to the board--either you are a family friendly shul or you aren't, I said--and the board member essentially said "yes, that is the ongoing tension."

Okay, but I'm not throwing looks of death every time they do something that's NOT child friendly.

Maybe I'm being selfish. I don't really know. But I think I know the boundaries of consideration and good taste, and I'm pretty sure that I haven't crossed them.

So Rabbi...with all due respect...stop looking at me like that.