National Bicycling Day aka Yom Kippur

The main reason why I like to stay in Israel during the High Holidays is Yom Kippur. When we got back to Israel after spending many years in the US, I was delighted to discover that Yom Kippur was no longer the dreary holiday of my childhood, it has totally changed and gained a uniquely Israeli interpretation as a  national bicycling day.

That year, about two weeks before the High Holidays, our daughters informed us that they absolutely had to have bicycles for Yom Kippur, all their friends had them. That is how we first learnt about the new tradition.

Imagine a big city where on a regular day the streets are packed with noisy cars and buses, and then all of a sudden, as though by magic -- everything comes to a halt and there is silence.

Earlier today I checked and saw  that on this year Yom Kippur in Tel Aviv starts  shortly before 6 pm. When I got on my bike around that time there were still some cars. But few minutes later everything stopped. While riding I saw families in white walking toward the synagogue, and some very well dressed young children with their parents on tricycles, and scooters.

When I rode back the busy Hatayasim highway was totally empty of cars and filled with older children on their bicycles. Later tonight I expect to see the streets become even fuller with people, this is the night when everybody goes outside.

Tomorrow, like most Tel Avivians,  we will ride our bicycles, in previous years we headed to the sea and rode along the shore before finally arriving to Hayarkon river and then back home. It is literally a once in a year experience. For me this is also the only day that I feel confident enough to ride on the roads and don’t have to worry about being run over by a car.

I don’t know who invented Bicycling Day and whether  s/he works in the bicycling business, but she is clearly a genius. Naturally every year before Yom Kippur the sales of bicycles increase tremendously.

Probably for many Orthodox Jews the practice of observing the holiest day of the year has not changed much throughout the years, but for me as a secular Jew the holiday has become meaningful once it stopped belonging only to Orthodox Jews. As a child every Yom Kippur we hid at home and I remember my mother asking us to eat quietly and not to make noise because the neighbors were passing by our kitchen window on their way back from Shul.

Bicycling has changed all that, Yom Kippur stopped being a holiday that had nothing to do with me or my life style and became a favorite holiday, one which I could enjoy as an Israeli, if not as an observant Jew.

On that same Yom Kippur when we returned to Israel we were walking  at night behind our two cycling daughters. Dizengof street was quiet and there were no cars. All of a sudden an old and noisy Volkswagen beetle came toward us with all its windows open. We saw that the driver of that car was the poet David Avidan.

It never occurred to me before, but perhaps Avidan did not realize that Yom Kippur has changed and wanted to protest. As one of the greatest  poets of secularization I believe that he would have loved the new Israeli holiday of Bicycling Day.

The essay appeared at the Times Of Israel

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/national-bicycling-day-aka-yom-kippur/

Kindergarten Children Under A Magnifying Glass

Yesterday Ha’aretz reposted on Facebook  a popular article with the intriguing name: "Parents do not pity their Kindergarten children." This title is an ironic allusion to the famous poem by Yehuda Amichai: "God pities the Kindergarten children."

Among other issues, the article criticizes the new demand that children will know how to read while they are still in Kindergarten. I agree with the criticism, but can testify, from my personal experience, that it is not a new trend. This is an essay that I wrote about over parenting:

When another mother told me that I had to make sure that my four-and-a-half-year-old daughter knew how to read before she started kindergarten that fall, I knew that I was in trouble. She explained that in the event that she didn’t read she would be put in the lowest ability group, and that would be the end. I was sure no mother in her right mind would risk ruining her daughter’s future and teaching her to read seemed like a small price to pay. But that was only the beginning:

Please keep reading in the Times Of Israel

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/kindergarten-children-under-a-magnifying-glass/

Is It Really About Love? Valentine's Day

In spite of spending 15 years in the US, I never got used to the commercial way Valentine's Day was celebrated there. After the Christmas decorations had finally disappeared from the stores, it took but a minute for the red and pink Valentine's Day merchandise to fill their place. It’s not that I don’t believe in love, but, as a skeptical Israeli, I suspected that Valentine’s Day was actually a scheme devised by companies like Hallmark Cards in order to boost sales during the cold dreary winter months.

And speaking of cards I was especially uncomfortable with the public celebration of Valentine’s Day at the elementary school.

The simple question “will you be my Valentine,” is honest and specific.  I tell you that I care about you and ask if you feel the same way about me. This question is directed to only one person-- you.

Please keep reading in the Times Of Israel

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/is-it-really-about-love-valentines-day/

From Marriage Ban To Freezing Eggs: The High Price Of Equality

Until the end of the Second World War and even later, in many places around the world, women had to choose between a career and marriage. Those who decided to have a career knew that they had to give up having a family.

In Britain, for example, by law, being a teacher or working in the Civil Service meant that the woman remained a spinster. Only in 1944 did the Education Act enshrined that women teachers were not dismissed once they got married. Two years later in 1946 marriage bar was removed from female civil servants.

Marriage bar at the work place must have made life simpler, at least for men, 

Please keep reading in the Times Of Israel

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/from-marriage-ban-to-freezing-eggs-the-high-price-of-equality/

The Case Of The Missing Assignment Or Too Much Information

Last week I heard on NPR that in some elementary schools in the US parents are notified by email if their child fails to submit even one assignment.  In high schools parents get on-going notices of all the different deadlines regarding their children’s college applications, so that they could make sure their children do not to miss them.

It is true that the school has all that data on hand and it is very easy to share it with the parents. Also teachers and schools are judged by their students’ performance and they are very willing to recruit the parents to help improve it.  It could even  be  possible that  the parents themselves request, or put pressure on the school to give them all that information.

Please keep reading in The Times Of Israel

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-case-of-the-missing-assignment-or-too-much-information/

Whose Money Is It Really?

 AUG.25.2013

The last time my father saw his parents and his brother Emanuel was in 1934,  when he was 21 years old. My father had worked for a Jewish firm  in Berlin, and when the firm was transferred to Palestine he moved with them. Immigration to British Mandate Palestine was banned, but some Jewish businesses were granted a certificate, and this is how my father was saved from the Nazis. My father’s younger brother Ignaz miraculously survived the war and multiple concentration camps, and settled in Germany. In 1956, twenty-two years after they had last seen each other, my father boarded a ship to go visit him.

In the fifties, Israel and West Germany signed a reparation agreement, and my father was granted compensation for the property that he had lost. At that time they were big demonstrations against signing the agreement, and my father too did not want to take any money. My mother, who immigrated to Israel in 1935 from Romania with her parents and enjoyed the support of a loving family, told him: “you can’t refuse the money, it is not for you but for your children,” so my father agreed.

My mother believed that as my father was deprived of his inheritance and the support of his parents, the money from the reparations could at least compensate for the financial loss. My mother, usually a mild and understated woman, was adamant about accepting the reparation money. Thanks to that money my brother was able to get expensive cello lessons, I got my teeth straightened, and we were able to buy an apartment. Only twenty years later did my parents  take their first trip together, when they were already in their fifties.

When my parents died they left me a small inheritance, which was more than I had expected. While I am grateful for their love and concern, I am also sad that they did not take more trips and vacations while they were still young enough to enjoy them. But I also find that in a curious way, my mother's advice and example is always there to remind me not to be too relaxed with [my?] money.

  

P.S 

Some time ago I read with my students an article by Jeff D. Opdyke  (Family Money: "Whose Inheritance Is It Anway?" Financial Times  8.10.2004); it dealt with the question of inheritance, how much money should  parents leave their children. The writer, a young man, noticed that several friends of his were worried that their parents were spending  all "their” inheritance money.  He asked his own father how he felt about that issue. The father said that he believed that if children behaved decently toward their parents it was their responsibility to leave the children some of what they themselves had received as an inheritance. I asked my students to write their opinion about this issue, unlike the friends of the Financial Times’  writer, many responded that they they wanted their parents to enjoy their  money.

"It Ain't Easy": The Fifth Commandment

September 16, 2013

The fifth commandment: “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God  is giving you,” is the first one among the ten which addresses inter- personal relationship. It is not just any relationship but that between children and their parents.  

This commandment has two versions:  the first one:  Exodus 20, which I quoted above, promises, as a reward, long life to the one who obeys it.  The second one from Deuteronomy  5,  stresses that it is God’s will: “‘Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God commanded you, that your days may be long, and that it may go well with you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.”

Lately I have been thinking about the significance of the fifth commandment and wondering whether it is an innate feeling to honor our father and mother. In Hebrew the words “honor” and “respect” stem from the same root.  So the Biblical  text reads “respect thy father and thy mother.”  I feel that the commandment  in English has a slightly different meaning as the word “honor” brings in additional connotations.

 So for the purpose of this post I use the word “respect;”  the meaning  of the verb “to respect”  is to feel or show deferential regard for; esteem.

 The fifth commandment doesn’t require that we feel high or special regard toward our parents but rather that we act respectfully.

It seems that at some point during adolescence parents stop being their children’s heroes; many of them never manage to attain that high position ever again. As parents ourselves we yearn for times when we were our children’s heroes.  Rationally we understand that in order to become their own persons children need to view their parents critically (as Freud showed so brilliantly in “The Killing of the Father”). Still it is not easy to lose that automatic admiration.  

So from that point on for most of our adult life, and especially as we age, we have to live with our children’s censure. It is not that they no longer respect us, but they question our actions, criticize our opinions and are impatient with our limited technological abilities.

I asked several friends how they felt about their own parents and the fifth commandment. Most answered that they showed respect to their parents and they appreciated what they had done for them. But often these adult children had reservations about their parents and were critical of them as human beings: they were too conservative, too stingy, too cold etc.  Although it was only an anecdotal survey, it raises interesting questions. 

I am afraid that until I was about thirty I too respected my father for what he had done for me, but it took me a long time to get to know and to appreciate who he really was. 

Sometimes when I see people my own age with their elderly parents and hear them talk to their parents as though they are mishbehaving  kids, I realize how hard it is to obey the fifth commandment. Moreover, being always patient and respectful to one’s parents is impossible. We often find our parents especially wanting when we are unhappy.  

The Bible doesn’t ask us who our parents are and whether or not they are worthy of our respect or high esteem,  but it orders us to “just do it”.

Simone De Beauvoir And The Burden Of The Double Day, Revisited

 NOV.10.2013 - 2:54 PM

The other day I heard an inspiring yet somewhat disturbing story. It was about the challenges of a young career woman-- a mother, in the relentless business world. Her daughter celebrated her birthday at the preschool and had warned the  mother that if she failed to show up to the party on time, she would dismiss her as a mother.

On the appointed day the mother had to attend a meeting which was due to end fifteen minutes prior to the party. As it was rush hour, she knew that she would never get from the center of Tel Aviv  to the party on time. Desperate times called for desperate measures, thus she had planned ahead and hired a delivery motorcyclist who waited for her at the end of the meeting and raced  through heavy traffic to the school: She wasn't late.

This time the mother found a solution, but I have to wonder about all the other instances when she couldn't, and about all the important occasions in her daughter’s life that she had to miss.The preschooler and  her mother suffered many disappointments.  It seems that from an early age the daughter learnt that a threat could actually be an effective tool to help her mother steer in her direction.

The story demonstrates the creativity and resourcefulness of the mother, she thinks outside the box and comes up with innovative solutions. Those are rare and sought after qualities even in the business world. However, it is a sad comment on our society when a  mother  has to literally risk her life to get to a her daughter's birthday party on time.

For generations Feminists have been wrestling with the issue of combining home and work. Simone de Beauvoir in The Second Sex, (1953) was against women's employment and argued that combining home and work meant a burden of the ‘double day’ which underpinned the subordinate position of women in society. She further details the hardships in store for women, at all professional levels, who attempt to combine marriage and work. She points out the difficulties of the woman worker or employee, the secretary, the saleswoman, all of whom go to work outside the home. It is much more difficult for them to combine their employment with household duties, which would seem to require at least three and a half hours a day, with perhaps six hours on Sunday – a good deal to add to the hours in factory or office. As for the learned professions, even if women lawyers, doctors, and professors obtain some housekeeping help, the home and children are for them also a burden that is a heavy handicap.

De Beauvoir, who never married, wrote about the plight of working married women. The sociologists Alva Myrdal and Viola Klein studied working mothers and like most Feminists of their era, advocated part-time work for mothers once their children went to school. They promoted this style of work in their book Women’s Two Roles (1956) since they regarded being  part of the working force for women as a mission and as an end in itself.

Today, sixty years later, most mothers cannot afford to work part time even if they wish to do so. De Beauvoir was right: many women, mothers in particular, still face the burden of the double day once they get home. And if they need to make some changes in their work's schedule, they have to take heroic measures.

After all this time, most men still find it easier to view this situation as a woman’s problem, but this  is a grave oversight. Men  should help make the working environment  conducive for mothers, as it is also their own children that the mothers are forced to disappoint.

I hope that the daughter in the story would not grow up believing that it's just not worth it. Moreover, it will be unfortunate if, in order not to disappoint their own daughters, she and other female friends would decide either not to have children like de Beauvoiror, or if they do have them to go back to being stay-at home moms like most of their foremothers.

I Love You And You And You X Twenty

Now that Valentine Day is safely behind us perhaps it is time to question one of the less savory customs associated with this special day.

The simple question “will you be my Valentine? is honest and specific.  I tell you that I love you and ask if you feel the same way about me. This question is directed to only one person-- you.

But when my daughters were told to prepare Valentine cards for their whole class, I had to wonder what does this practice really teach them?

My first introduction to this type of socialistic Valentine happened when my daughters were in elementary school in Texas. Several days prior to February 14th they came home and said that we should buy card boards, glitters and colorful markers in order to make "Valentines." Their teachers instructed them to make one for every student in the class so that no one would feel left out.

Don’t get me wrong, generally I am a firm believer in inclusion, but  in this case, as my girls sat down to work, painstakingly cuting and decorating twenty cards, I felt that there was something wrong with this custom.

In every class there are the  bullies, and  children who are just not very nice, is there no choice in the matter? Why do they deserve a Valentine card from a class member who may not even like them?

If teachers aspire that each child would feel loved why don't they ask the parents to prepare a special Valentine card in honor of their child instead of forcing class mates to make them? 

The Biblical commandment "thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself,” (Leviticus 19:18) is one of the basic principles of a civilized society as it emphasizes the importance of treating our fellow man fairly and respectfully. But Valentine Day is not about neighborly love, it is the one day in the year which is dedicated to true love and romance, do we wish to dilute it by making it non-personal and generic? Do we want our children to feel guilty about having a discriminating taste? Moreover, when they become teenager would we like them to go out with people they do not care for because they would not want to hurt their feelings? Or even worse, do we want them to believe that it is not ok to say no?

 In western culture Valentine Day is a sad day for those people who do not have a special person in their life. Thus all the Valentine cards which they had received in their childhood would not shelter them from feeling lonely.

I feel that the day of love is best celebrated as an intimate occasion without generic cards professing meaningless sentiments. And if children take part in the festivities of Valentine Day, they should be encouraged to express their feelings towards the people they care about freely and genuinely.

Do We Indulge Or spoil Our Children? It Depends On The Language

Yesterday  a group of us sat around the table for Shabbat dinner. We didn't discuss world peace or the chance to finally bring it to the Middle East. The most burning issue was the high price of housing, which makes life in Israel hard, especially for young people.

This is not a new problem, when we were young my husband and I could not afford to  buy an apartment since, unlike the US,  it was not possible to put  only 10% or 20 % down payment and to borrow the rest from the bank.  We had to come up with most of the money upfront, so we rented.

The rule of thumb in rent, we were told, is that payment should not exceed one third of the monthly income: we were lucky to be able to keep it at that level. However,

Please keep on reading in the Times of Israel

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/do-we-indulge-or-spoil-our-children-it-depends-on-the-language/