How I Relaxed & Learned to Love a Snow Day

By Jordana Horn for Raising Kvell

The true mark of adulthood is not age: it’s whether you react to a snow day with despair or delight.

“Thank you, God!” my 4th grader yelled, as he hopped from foot to foot in a spontaneous variant on the hora with his 3rd grade brother (I had thought the school superintendent was responsible for making the decision on calling off school on account of inclement weather, but never mind). My 2-year-old, upon learning she would not be going to school, promptly burst into tears.

I totally know how the 2-year-old felt. With less than two weeks until the interminable winter break–I mean, that joyous time with no school, when babysitters all have better things to do than hang out with your kids–all work for the work-from-home parent needs to be taken care of today, if not yesterday. Having three kids at school was essential in order for me to accomplish anything, whether that “anything” was work, newborn baby gift thank you notes, or simply sitting down.

I’m also the kind of parent who sees snow as something best viewed through a window or in an Ansel Adams photo. I see snow and I start thinking of snow scrapers, rock salt ruining my shoes, and moving to California.

Plus of course, there are the attendant stresses of the snow day for the parent, like the games of Where The F*ck Did I Put Their Gloves?, Let’s See Whose Snowpants Still Fit!, Can The Toddler Hang Onto My Legs For 24 Hours? and Sibling Rivalry: The Over-Amplified Musical.

But then, I started getting gifts: unexpected gifts that fell from the sky like the snow, making everything look different and even kind of beautiful.

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Christmas is Why We Send Our Son to Jewish Day School

By Lauren Apfel for Raising Kvell

I am not a practicing Jew, but I don’t celebrate Christmas either. My husband is a lapsed Christian and a loather of all things Yule. Late December has always been an uncomfortable time in our house. Until, that is, we decided four years ago to send our kids to a Jewish school.

It was a surprisingly easy decision, made for a host of sound reasons, exactly the ones you would expect to figure into a choice about the expanse of your children’s education. But it also solved the problem of Christmas for us and this has turned out to be one of its most wonderful virtues.

I spent the holiday season as a girl in small Jewish niche towns–Great Neck and Boca Raton–where the passing of Christmas was marked in its own ritualistic way, with Chinese food and a trip to the movies. So many happy memories. When I moved to the United Kingdom 14 years ago, however, Christmas became a dark and almost unbearable period, something to escape, not to indulge in. It triggered in me a strong desire to flee homeward and back to a place where there is still a life to be lived on the 25th of December that doesn’t involve a decorated pine tree.

In the UK, it is near impossible to opt out of Christmas in a way that is comprehensible to the neighbors. We are a country with an established religion and this makes us both culturally and constitutionally different from the United States. In America, diversity of religion is built into the national edifice, which has the effect of increasing awareness, even if imperfectly, that not everybody celebrates Christmas. Hanukkiyahs appear in shopping malls amidst the wreathes of holly; greeting cards can be purchased with vague well-wishes that don’t include the C-word. Not so on this side of the Atlantic.

Here, people rarely–and I mean rarely–acknowledge an alternative to welcoming Santa through the chimney with open arms, even those who are self-proclaimed atheists. From the beginning of November, Christmas rears its green and red head, boldly, ubiquitously, and without the faintest pretension that Britain is a multicultural society. The idea is that Christmas is a secular holiday, a festival simply for family and feasting and fun. It is all of those things, true enough, but it is also a marker of the birth of Christ and for some of us who live in these borders there is no way around this point of origin.

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Yiddish Theater for the Kindergarten Set

A late-in-life career change isn't so unusual. A mathematician who devotes his life to klezmer music. A full-time mom who starts her own business. But even in that context, what Betty Rosenberg Perlov has done is pretty unusual. Or, we should say, when she's done it. Perlov just published her first book. At age 96.

Perlov's parents were stars of the Yiddish theater in its heyday, nearly 100 years ago, so she was privy to all the behind-the-scenes action. Her new picture book, Rifka Takes a Bow, tells the story of a little girl who explores the theater with her father, watches the actresses put on makeup, plays with props like a golden crown and a pile of money, and then accidentally wanders onstage during one of her parents' shows. The colorful illustrations from Cosei Kawa give the book an air of nostalgia and fantasy mixed together.

Plucked from Perlov's own memories and childhood, the book brings to life the exciting world of Yiddish theater for an audience that might never have known its thrills were it not for her late-in-life decision to write this adorable book.

Bravo, Betty!

- Tamar Fox for Jewniverse

Judaism Pages for Kids

Welcome to the Judaism Pages for Kids section of our website. Here you will find pages written specifically for children which explain various aspects of Judaism.
On this website you will find:

(If you are not able to find the information you want in this section of the website, then please see our Judaism section which covers a wider range of topics.)

Table of Contents:

What is Judaism?

Judaism & Israel

Jewish Symbols

Symbols in the Home

Mitzvot

The Jewish Year

Holydays

Shabbat
Shabbat Symbols
Shabbat Links
Rosh haShanah
Yom Kippur
Sukkot
Hoshana Rabbah
Shemini Atzeret
Simchat Torah


Chanukah Links
Purim Links
Pesach (Passover)
Pesach Customs
Pesach Prayers
Pesach Links
The Omer Period
Lag baOmer
Shavuot

Keeping Kosher

Jewish Prayer

Stories for Children

Rachel & Akiva
Grandmother Rachel in Jerusalem

Index of BJE Online Activities

Links to Multimedia & Interactive Learning Activities

Check it out and have hours of Jewish fun for your child.

Oy, Hark! A Jewish parent's guide to Christmas specials

By Dahlia Lithwick for Slate.com

If you are a little Jewish kid, Santa Claus does not enter your home via the chimney on Christmas Eve. Instead, he arrives in late fall, usually by way of the Target catalog and the television set. And if you are a little Jewish kid confronting old St. Nick for the first time via Frosty, Rudolph, Charlie Brown, or the 1966 animated version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas, you may find yourself with a lot of questions. "Mamma, who is Center and where are my presents?" asked my 3-year-old, rather randomly, in October. "Mommy, is Santa real?" my 5-year-old asks pretty much daily. In the way of 5-year-old boys everywhere, he follows that one up with "Mom, if Santa and Judah the Maccabee got in a fight, who would win?"

One needn't be virulently anti-Christmas to experience the seasonal anxiety felt by parents who want their children to enjoy the winter holidays while avoiding religious indoctrination. That's what makes parenting Jewish kids at Christmastime such a fraught proposition. Jewish women who as children were whisked away to Jewish vacation resorts in Florida marry Jewish men who hung Hanukkah stockings next to a Hanukkah bush, alongside the plate of gefilte fish they'd left out for Santa. It's hard enough reconciling two deeply held versions of the Jewish holidays. Just try blending two deeply held traditions regarding the noncelebration of Christmas.

I, for instance, grew up in a household that viewed only How the Grinch Stole Christmas and A Charlie Brown Christmas as acceptable Jewish holiday fare. My husband, on the other hand, tells me he grew up with unfettered access to the whole panoply of animated Christmas specials. When we discussed this for the first time last weekend, I gasped: "They let you watch Rudolph?" I confess that I spoke the words as though his family had permitted him to spend his Decembers camped out in a crèche.

Whether you are Christian or Jewish, come Easter and Passover, The Ten Commandments represents one-stop entertainment shopping. But there are few winter holiday movies that speak to all religions. So last week I sent out an e-mail and posted on Facebook asking Jewish friends how they decided on the permissibility of the Christmas television specials. The responses were amazing. And also bonkers.

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