Ima 2 Eight

I wish I could make every female I know read this blog post:

Fixing the Floor: http://immahlady.wordpress.com/

We had too many bananas getting ripe, so I tried this Banana Bread recipe, and it was really good and easy – my favorite kind of recipe. I needed it to be pareve, so I used margarine. I also used some whole wheat and some white flour.  I sprinkled walnuts on one of them, but would love to sprinkle choc. chips the next time:

Banana Bread

INGREDIENTS
3 or 4 ripe bananas, smashed
1/3 cup melted butter (I used margarine to make this pareve).
1 cup sugar (can easily reduce to 3/4 cup)
1 egg, beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon baking soda
Pinch of salt
1 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour
METHOD
No need for a mixer for this recipe. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C). With a wooden spoon, mix butter into the mashed bananas in a large mixing bowl. Mix in the sugar, egg, and vanilla. Sprinkle the baking soda and salt over the mixture and mix in. Add the flour last, mix. Pour mixture into a buttered 4×8 inch loaf pan. Bake for 1 hour. Cool on a rack. Remove from pan and slice to serve.

This recipe is from:  Simply Recipes http://simplyrecipes.com

Apparently Palestinian Authority’s Mahmoud Abbas is publicly complaining about Israel acting like a democracy.  This story seems Onion-like in its absurdity. http://www.israeltoday.co.il/default.aspx?tabid=178&nid=21143.

Tzedek-Tzedek is a powerful blog that confronts really difficult issues Israel faces today. I appreciate the writing as well as the courage of the topics.  I think this piece, about fires recently started in Israel, is a disturbing and important one, but I always wonder about giving more publicity to shameful behavior in the religious Jewish world.  http://tzedek-tzedek.blogspot.com/2010/05/grave-and-burning-issue.html. This would be a sad, sad example of Abbas getting his way. Our democracy not at work.

According to this one source, Obama is losing his ground with American Jewish voters.  http://www.jpost.com/International/Article.aspx?id=176051. The article juxtaposes two polls to suggest that the shift in support is due to the shift in support for Obama’s Middle East policies. I don’t believe there has been a dramatic transformation, and that suddenly Israel has become a primary reason for US Jewish votes for either party. So I wonder how much of the shift really has anything to do with Israel, and if as little as I suspect, then why the shift?  Is it sadly just “the economy, stupid”?

On a much lighter note, I resisted watching this youtube video when my friends all posted it. Then I watched it. And then I posted it on twitter and facebook. So if any of you haven’t gotten it yet, or resisted it like me, please watch. A young mother from Kansas City and her husband went looking for “truth” while in Kansas City, and found Judaism. Then on vacation in Israel, she felt it was a safer place to raise her kids than the violent streets of her former home.  The cynic in me is pretty sure the story is being played up more than a little for the ratings of Israel’s American Idol, “Kochav Nolad”. But it is still a feel-good story. Here is my question: if American Jews had to live in worse neighborhoods would they finally learn how safe and peaceful Israel is for children too?

Lastly, I want to make a shameless plug for Natural Jewish Parenting. Not the philosophy, the magazine and web site. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. Apparently there are a bunch of us “freaks” out there, scattered in each community…

My house is full of books. Overflowing, in fact. Kids’ books, adult books, baby books, Jewish books, science books, magazines. They are literally bursting out of every shelf on every floor of the house. Most of them were hand-me-downs, or gifts from my generous parents.  Some are yard sale and “freecycling” finds.  I don’t pay retail for books. Retail for books? But there are libraries out there!

Every month my children come home from school with a Scholastic Book Club Order Form. Not only are they told they have a deadline to bring it back, and that there are cheapo toys offered with 1/3 of the offerings, but they are also informed that the school gets books from the company if we order…. all of which is, of course, reflected in the price of the books. Five kids with order forms every month. And I resist. I do. I recommend that my children take a good look at the bookshelf in their room and select 20 books to discard. This usually solves the problem. Sometimes, I give them a “maybe” when the pleas are strong, and then they forget about it. One of those “maybes” led last week to this from one of my 9 yos:

“Dearest Ima,

I really love you and I am so grateful and you get me so much stuff I want, so much things!

You once said I could have one book from the book order. I am pretty sure this is the last book order. I really really want one book. Please can I have it?

I’ll be happy with anything you say about it, ”

Now please tell me that you would be able to say no?!?

Today is Yom Yerushalayim, celebrating the reunification of Jerusalem. There was time in my life where I spent my entire day writing letters for a living proclaiming the celebration of Jerusalem’s 3000th year as “the eternal historical, political and religious capital of the Jewish people.” I wish that my employer at the time and other leaders around the world still proclaimed such things; the past 15 years have seen an amazing amount of changes.

Please enjoy this video. jerusalem

The voice in the background is the very talented Sam Glaser.

We are all supposed to yearn for Jerusalem. My problem isn’t missing Jerusalem enough. It is translating the daily ache I feel of not being there into a yearning for Jerusalem “habnuya”, the Yerushalayim we don’t yet have.

(A Mother In Israel or any other more experienced bloggers can feel free to help me figure out why I can’t seem to successfully embed the video itself here, and have to settle for a link!)

Today I was blessed to attend a fabulous class by Rabbi Aba Wagensberg of Israel. I went to a beautiful brunch (a spread of food prepared by others), learned beautiful Torah from a wonderful Rabbi, and had the honor of driving him to his next destination, with an uninterrupted 90 minutes to talk to him. (I am proud to count him as a client of my firm at the moment.)

After some adorable homemade cards, a breakfast I didn’t want and adorable hugs, I ran past the DISASTER of a kitchen filled with the supplies used to make the adorable homemade cards and the breakfast I didn’t want, and left. By myself. I spent the majority of the day not mothering, which was the best Mother’s day gift I could have asked for. Sorry if that makes me sound like a terrible Ima, but this year that is what I needed.

The topic of the class was “Coping with Pain and Suffering”.  Rabbi Wagensberg reminded me that everything that we are given is precisely what we need in order to help us become the best person we can be.

But this is also true for everyone we are given; our spouses and our children are just the challenges Hashem knows that we need to learn and grow. While he was addressing the serious, hard sufferings of this world people must deal with, I was also reminded on Mother’s Day that my children are the most amazing gifts in more ways than one.  They do teach me so much, and help me grow.  Each one is an awesome responsibility and often a huge enigma. But gifts. Not only for all of the good and wonderful things they do, but for the acting up, acting out, and just plain stumping me that occurs on a regular basis.

Having “abandoned” them for almost the entire day, sure enough my re-entry was met with a sudden list of traumas, complaints, boo-boos and of course “we’re starving“…..

…. thank you, Hashem, for the Mother’s Day gifts……

Roger Simon writes a brilliant article to the point about the recent thwarted Times Square terrorist attack in “Times Square – Its  the Jihad, stupid.”

Here is my analogy:

The  government seems to want a pat on the back from the public for having caught a termite. “We caught the bug, we caught it!”

… while remaining steadfastly in denial that there is an infestation right behind the wall slowly eating away at our whole house.

For we Jews, I wish people would stop pretending that Israel is the unsafe place to live. At least in Israel everyone knows there is a termite problem and sees it as their personal responsibility to fight it.

I hope I am not putting myself in very real danger by using a bug analogy. Thank goodness I am not as popular as South Park.

I am suffering from allergies.

I don’t suffer from allergies, but I have learned that if you live in the Garden State long enough, sooner or later you, too, will become an allergy sufferer. It is one of the many, many reasons that living in NJ is not my favorite thing in the world. Mostly because I belong in Israel (don’t we all?). But I digress…..

Because of the dry allergy cough, I have also lost the use of my voice. Not competely; it just hurts to use it.

One might say that losing the ability to yell at your family is a blessing. You have to find proper and healthy ways to communicate. It really isn’t, believe it or not, the loss of the yelling that is making me crazy. It’s the rest of it.

Taking the voice from a mother is like taking the scalpel from a surgeon. How can we do what we do? I don’t know sign language very well, and even if I did, my kids don’t. And we don’t live in one room or on one floor. And they don’t stay put or come to where I am to speak to me.

Furthermore, apparently having the big ones read bedtime stories to the little ones isn’t good enough. And the child who only agrees to be diapered with the “itsy bitsy spider” song sung to him (performed with Music Together sound effects of course) isn’t going to accomodate and get changed without.

This post is sounding a lot more like one long complaint than I meant it to. Laryngitis is truly not the worst of problems. It certainly curtails lashon hara.

However, motions, and speaking quietly so that they will all quiet down to listen can only take me so far.

I parent with food, I parent with hugs, I parent with gestures, with carpool, with laundry. But most — a HUGE most — of my parenting is done with those two, very precious, very sore vocal chords.

No, I am NOT “ima2nine”.  I am just really proud of two friends who have given birth to their own Jewish Mommy Blogs. Welcome to the blogosphere, ladies.

I would love to think I have inspired them, but I happen to know that they have been reading blogs better and more successful than mine. I hope they take my advice and check out  Hannah Katsman’s advice to new bloggers. Yet one more reason A Mother in Israel impresses so many of us.

Please visit http://immahlady.wordpress.com/
and http://tricolon.wordpress.com/ and give them an encouraging comment!

While I am making shameless plugs, I am really amazed by Allie Brosh and her blog success. She is hysterically funny, and I just could never, ever do what she does. he blog is http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/, or Hyperbole and A Half. It isn’t Jewish, and it isn’t a mommy blog; in fact, it isn’t even appropriate some of the time.  This interview with her is even better; I learned a lot about her, her humor and how she is the kind of multimedia blogging phenom that she is. (Two million hits a MONTH!)

I owe anyone who is kind enough to visit here a more significant post.  Working on it.

We were invited to be guests in someone else’s home this past Shabbat. That’s right, 8 out of the 9 of us picked up and moved in with another family for Shabbat. This very brave, gracious family has twelve – yes twelve – children.  Don’t worry; only ten of them were home.

We don’t go away very often, especially for Shabbat. We rarely go out for Shabbat meals locally in our own community. It is truly a lot of work, and usually easier to stay home. Not only is it invariably someone’s bed or nap time during a meal, but my picky eaters will usually come home from a meal telling me they are starving, so I have to make food anyway.

This last week was an intense work week for me, and my thinking was that with 10 children home (ages 22-3) there would be mess, chaos, noise and lots of food without my having to worry that it was all caused by my family. I also brought sleeping bags and pillows for my kids. The thought of anyone having to do double the amount of laundry I do just makes me woozy.

We had a fabulous, fabulous time. Two things struck me: 1. There was far more unanimous happiness and joy than there ever is at any “family outing”, which usually take more money and a lot more effort. 2. Being a host is good for a person, but so is being a guest.

We spent our Shabbat away in Lakewood, NJ, a black hat (or haredi) community, if not THE haredi community in the US. (Forgive me, Monsey).  The community as a whole observes Judaism in a lot of subtle little ways that are sharply different from our family.

One great thing about coming outside of our home, our neighborhood, our comfort zone, was to have a different role. In this case, mine was blissfully passive! Another was to get a new perspective. We didn’t just glimpse a different Judaism, we discussed it. We asked, we compared. We got a taste of something else.

When I was younger and single I encountered so many different Jews with different views on Torah and halacha. I saw and experienced such a wonderful range of minhagim (family traditions) and opinions. Then I settled down, had a family, and wanted to build a wonderful consistency for them. The break from that consistency was wonderful, and allowed us to understand a piece of Klal Yisrael just a little better.

Another wonderful thing about being a guest is seeing different styles in parenting. It is obviously clearer during a 26 hour visit than a two hour one. It is wonderful to digest what one can learn from others and to break the routine to the point where things aren’t happening by rote so that maybe you can “see” them.

There are some who claim that communities like Lakewood are insular, judgmental, close-minded, etc. Perhaps I am not looking for such negativity so I am not finding it. But I must say that the warmth and kindness from everyone I met was just amazing.  It is obvious to anyone there that I am an outsider who does things differently. I was greeted much more warmly than I have been in some other places. (As I always have been whenever in Lakewood.) By being there, I could ask questions, as so many people ask me, about why things are done the way they are. And as with so many other things in the Torah, the answers are often simple and beautiful, just with a perspective I didn’t previously have.

The informal and extensive hospitality is one of the many things I miss about Israel. I was recently told that travelling to another’s home routinely means bringing one’s own linens.  I bet that helps a lot.

I also enjoy being a host(ess) for many of the same reasons. I love hearing a different person’s story, their point of view, their Jewish journey. (I think this particular part I owe to many meals at Alan and Bonnie Cohen’s home opposite the Old City of Jerusalem. One of the many things I owe them…) I like the new “flavors” that different people bring to our meals. It isn’t always easy to be the host, especially if you feel compelled to make a certain kind of impression. (Of course I have never felt that way.) It is often easier to keep things routine, just family; simple. I have never been known for preferring easier for its own sake.

It isn’t always easy to invite a whole family into your home, especially overnight. Nor is it ever easy, I think, to travel somewhere with six of your own. But the experience was so very worth it, and I feel invigorated not only by the rest of letting someone else “make shabbos”, but by the fresh perspective and the watching and listening.

….. I will just have to hope that someone else, at some point in time, is crazy enough to once again invite all of us to be guests.