This will be the last of the bar mitzva posts for quite a while – we won’t have another bar mitzva for 3.5 years, though we will have a bas mitzva coming up in the fall!

On Friday, we rented a car for a few hours so we’d be able to take all the food to the hall.  Ds18 and dh took care of all the loading and unloading  - it was a lot of food and supplies and a lot of work.  This was the part I was least comfortable with – all the people who knew what was cooked and for when weren’t at the hall to unpack it and know where things were being put.  But someone needed to be at home to greet our guests arriving from out of town and take them to the homes where they were staying.

I got to the hall about 3:30 pm, bringing dd11 and the three littles with me.  I took the littles so that the older girls wouldn’t have to worry about getting them ready, and would be able to get there quickly.  This was very nice of me (since having them running around when I was trying to get things done really wasn’t helpful), but in the end everyone arrived at the hall about five minutes before what I thought was the latest candlelighting time (I found out later that there were ten minutes more than I thought)!

(Tonight dd17 was able to recover the pictures we thought were lost!)

Dd15 and ds13 having fun

Dd15 and ds13 looking like themselves

Ds13 and dd17

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Since there was so little time, our family photo was very rushed – there was no time to set everyone up.  Basically we quickly called everyone in and said, ‘look at the camera’!  But I’m happy we got everyone in at one time!  That doesn’t happen often anymore, especially now that ds18 doesn’t live at home.  (If it looks like a lot of people, we actually have one more than usual – my mom is on the left.)

We had our own minyan in the hall for Friday night – there was a separate room that we set up as our synagogue.  It was kind of funny – for kabbalas Shabbos (first prayer service when the Sabbath begins), ds wasn’t able to be counted in the minyan, but for maariv he was, since he turned 13 when Shabbos began.

After the services, we had dinner together – such a nice group of people!  I’ll have to go in order of when we knew people from.  First of all was the 18 year old daughter of a friend of mine, who is studying in seminary in Jerusalem this year.  I’m putting her in chronological order first since our connection with her family began when I was twelve – her mother and I walked down the aisle to our eighth grade graduation together!  We later became good friends when we lived a couple of doors away from one another as mothers of young families, and became walking partners.  It’s been over 12.5 years since we’ve been neighbors, but we’ve stayed in touch through the years.

One older couple came from Beitar – we met them when we were married just a few months and spent Shabbos there to see if it was a place we’d want to move to.  Now I’m just about at the stage of life they were when we first met – they made aliyah with a family of ten children, when their oldest was 18.  Their oldest daughter had just gotten married when we met, and during my visit last year to Israel, they married off their ninth child.  We did end up moving to Beitar, and they were there for the bris of ds13!

Then was a family of 6 who came from Raanana; I met the wife the first week that we moved to Seattle when we were both watching our kids play in the kiddie playground of Volunteer Park.  When she told me she was Jewish, I invited them to our home for Shabbos lunch, and our friendship grew from there.  Later we moved to Baltimore, and they visited us there a couple of times when they were on the east coast.  Then in 2006 they moved to Israel, and we lost touch.  Thanks to Linked In we were able to find each other again, and they made the trip up with their four lovely daughters.  (This was really nice since a couple of our girls connected with theirs and spent all Shabbos together.)

Then a couple came from Efrat.  We met them at our wonderful shul in Baltimore.  You don’t get to know every person who is in the same synagoge as you, but we got to know them better when my older kids helped prepare the food for the annual Simchas Torah meal that this couple arranged each year for the shul, before they made aliyah.  We were reminiscing about this as they cut up the chicken prior to the lunch meal on Shabbos day!  This same couple met us at the airport when we arrived, bringing us food and drinks and arranging our transportation from the airport to Karmiel.  They were our Baltimore connection.

Then we had three young men: best friend of ds13, son of my dearest friend in Baltimore; 19 year old next door neighbor of this same friend who we’ve known for nine years; and 19 year old cousin of ds13′s best friend – after being friends with the family for so many years, we know just about everyone in their extended family!

During this dinner meal my husband spoke about ds13.  Following that, I shared with everyone a family custom we have: at every person’s birthday, we go around the table and everyone shares something nice that they appreciate about that person.  I hadn’t asked the kids to prepare anything in advance and made it clear that no one was being put on the spot, but anyone who wanted to say something was welcome to.  I was pleasantly surprised that a number of our guests shared some nice thoughts, in addition to most of my kids.

After the meal, dh went home with the littles, and I stayed with a number of the older kids and guests to get ready for our kiddush the next morning.  We got home after midnight, but it was nice to know that we could be more relaxed the next morning.

The next morning we got up really late – 8 am – and we were supposed to be dressed and out of the house by 8:15 so we could be at shul on time to hear ds reading the Torah!  I really didn’t want to wake the littles up, knowing they hadn’t gotten to sleep until 11 pm, and they wouldn’t have a chance to take a nap until much later that day.  But we got them up and with their groggy participation, got them dressed.  We got to shul literally three minutes before ds13 was called up to read the Torah.  I had a couple of minutes of worry, not being sure when to throw the candy – I could see the little kids had all come in from outside and were looking expectantly to where we were at – but I was having a very hard time hearing the services and couldn’t tell exactly what they were up to.  Fortunately, we threw it at just the right time and it was fun watching all the little kids scrambling (not mine, though, and I had kept a few back since I knew they wouldn’t elbow their way in a crowd to get candies).  Ds did a great job reading; dd15 commented that it must be a lot of pressure to have the chief rabbi of the city right at your elbow, but he didn’t get flustered.

After the Torah reading, we went to the hall to get ready for the kiddush/meal.  It was gray and rainy, the worst kind of weather for a kiddush because who wants to go out in the cold and wet?  A half hour before the kiddush began, the sun emerged from the clouds and began to shine brightly – it turned into a beautiful day!  And it stayed that way until an hour after our lunch meal was finished.

There were a lot of people who came – I really wasn’t able to guesstimate in advance how many people would feel enough of a connection to us to come, particularly since the kiddush wasn’t held at the shul, so people had to make more of an effort to get out.  It’s not an automatic given that people go to a kiddush – they don’t, unless they know someone, and we’ve only been living here for five months – so it was really, really nice.  I felt very surrounded by communal warmth.

After the kiddush, we set up for the lunch meal.  Ds13 told me that at the bar mitzvas he’s been to here, everyone has a full mechitza (divider) between the men and women.  Well, I told him, we’re not going to.  ’But Mommy, you can’t!  Everyone does it.’  Yes, that really swayed me.  :)  We had the table of ds13 and his friends at one end of the hall, the table of older girls at the other end, and all the other tables filled with families.  Someone at the end of the meal told me they had made a bris in the same hall, but it wasn’t nearly as nice.  I asked her why?  And she said, she thinks that having the mechitza changed the entire atmosphere – women couldn’t see when someone on the other side was speaking, so they continued talking and the speaker couldn’t be heard, little kids went back and forth from parent to parent, and it just didn’t seem as cohesive.  She said it was so much nicer the way we did it, without compromising in any way.

There was loads of singing by ds13′s classmates – a nice thing about ds being the youngest in the class is that they’ve been to so many bar mitzvas, they all know how to act properly, sing the same songs, etc.  Then at some point they did some fun stuff with all of the older boys in the hall – lifting ds13, building a human pyramid – I watched them but I don’t know exactly what they were doing, but they had fun and it was appropriate.  And entertaining for the rest of us to watch!   (The mother of one of the Israeli boys there later told me, ‘I heard that the boys had a lot of fun at your bar mitzva!’  I don’t know what, if anything, was different than any other bar mitzva, but I’m glad they all had a good time.)

During this meal, dh spoke again – in English – and then one of our guests spoke – in Hebrew.  (The night before, a couple of ds’s classmates who had been invited to stay for dinner asked me if the meal was going to be in Hebrew.  ’Nope, all in English’, I told them.  ’What about tomorrow?’  they wanted to know, ‘will it be 50/50?’  I laughed and told them, ‘maybe 2/3 English, 1/3 Hebrew’.  When first thinking about this, I had been a little apprehensive since most of his classmates don’t speak any English, but we felt that as our family celebration, it was more important that it be in a language our family was comfortable with.  This worked out really nicely.

Everyone who wanted to was welcome to hang out after the meal, but otherwise was invited back for the third meal later on.  Later on, people trickled in, and it was a very relaxed and comfortable atmosphere –  by this point, our guests had a chance to get to know one another, so they were interacting with each other very naturally.  After that we again had a private minyan for maariv, and made havdala there.

It was such a nice, nice Shabbos!  Every single person who came really enhanced our joy.  Sometimes people assume that lots of other people will go to an event, and their presence won’t be noticed, but I appreciated every single person – and this isn’t just because we were new here.  I’ve felt this at every one of our family celebrations that when people take time to share our joy, it enhanced the experience for us all.

I’m really so grateful for how smoothly everything went.  I kept whispering ‘thank you’ to Hashem (G-d) throughout the day; sometimes you feel very aware of everything being done for you, almost a conscious feeling of being given a gift, and this was one of those times.  I was also very grateful to have been emotionally present and relaxed for the entire weekend; sometimes people get so busy with the technical aspect of arranging a simcha that they lose sight of the bigger picture, and can get irritable and irritated with their family members.  I really didn’t want that to be me.

To sum up, it was a wonderful weekend in every way, and especially since until three weeks ago I had been dreading the entire experience, am very, very, very grateful for how it all went!

Avivah

We catered the entire bar mitzva weekend ourselves – this meant cooking for three meals, plus the kiddush.  Friday night we had 25 people, for the kiddush there were around 200 (lots of kids!), for the main bar mitzva meal we had about 80, and for shalosh seudos (the third Sabbath meal), we had under 25.

This was definitely more work than hiring someone but: 1) in Karmiel there are no caterers so arranging catering from another city would have been complicated, and 2) we catered the kiddush for our last bar mitzva 5.5 years ago because it was a very busy time in our lives, and were extremely disappointed with the quantity, setup, and service.

I’ll backtrack for a minute and share with you that scenario – ten minutes before everyone entered the social hall, I came in and was horrified – a couple of other adults who saw it were also shocked – there had been just one table set up for men and women in the entire hall.  Never, ever were receptions were set up in this way, and they had sent enough food for just one table!  I had to ask that everything be rearranged at the last minute (the people who came down early immediately told the catering staff how it was supposed to be and started moving table around).

The young man who had been left in charge was very belligerent and unhelpful (the caterer had three events that weekend and wasn’t there), insisting it was all done just as it should have been.  I had to have my kids run home with a baby stroller and bring back lots of food that I had for our main meal after the kiddush  - kugels, salad, and big bags of cherries – to  compensate for the caterer bringing enough for only half of the number we had paid for.  I told the person in charge that I realized a mistake had been made, and asked him to put out the stuff we brought so the tables wouldn’t look empty.  The worker was very upset at us – I think he was new to the job and insecure about it, and he didn’t want this to reflect badly on him – and though we thanked him repeatedly for his work and told him mistakes happen, we knew it wasn’t his fault – it was very, very stressful and unpleasant.

After the kiddush we took back whatever was left – the things we brought in addition to a small amount of cake and kugel the caterer had provided (which we ended up throwing away in a dumpster because it was so dry and unappetizing).  When I spoke to the caterer after Shabbos, I was told that his worker claimed there was plenty of food (yes, because I brought so much!) and the proof was that there was food left over that I took home.  I explained that I took back the food I had brought since I needed it for our meal following the kiddush, and there was only a small pan of the other things left that wasn’t what we had brought that I took back, but the clear implication was that I was lying.  So no apology, no compensation – just accusations at me.

This was really upsetting to me because I was being treated like a manipulative liar, when I had been extremely reasonable about the entire situation, and really thought that there had been a mistake and the caterer would be embarrassed about this huge bungle.  When I delegate something like this, I accept that if I’m not doing it, it’s going to be however it is – and as long as it falls into the range of acceptable, I don’t nitpick and I don’t micromanage – I trust whoever’s in charge to take care of things.   He was more concerned about covering his ego and wouldn’t admit anything had been done wrong.   The irony is that my husband had no idea of all that was going on behind the scenes of the setup – there was no time to tell him – and thanked the caterer publicly earlier that morning when he spoke, for the amazing kiddush that was so much nicer than we had expected!  So our kiddush ended up being a feather in the cap for the caterer, and only a handful of people who saw things at the beginning knew that it was because I had worked hard in a very short amount of time to salvage what would have been a disaster.

I had people who told me right away that morning they’d back up what they saw if necessary when I spoke to the caterer (it was really bad), and could have made a big deal about this and insist on having part of the money paid refunded, but I just wanted to wash my hands of having to deal with the entire situation; we had paid in cash in advance so there was no leverage, and we would have had to fight for it.  So in short, we paid a lot of money for the privilege of having all of it ‘taken care of for us’.

I wanted something different this time!  By cooking and baking everything ourselves, it allowed us to have a variety and abundance of foods that we would have had to pay a lot to have had.  Also, most caterers here seem to have the same basic menu, which is a lot of carbs that are all the same color (beige/brown/white), and I like when food on the table is visually appealing.

We did the baking for the kiddush the week before, mostly, and froze the cakes.The cooking was done entirely from Weds. evening through Friday morning.  It may sound like a marathon but it really wasn’t – dd15 kept saying she felt like there should be more to do than there was.

For the bar mitzva kiddush (reception), we were told the norm here is cakes, drinks, fish (eg pickled herring), yerushalmi kugel, and sometimes crackers, dips, fruits and vegetables.  Initially I considered this, but didn’t really like the idea since it  made things more complicated with set up and clean up.  I also feel like people are going home to a full Shabbos lunch, and I don’t need to provide a full meal for all of them before that.  So I decided that I didn’t have to do that just because everyone else did, and would instead have just cakes and drinks.

(Below, ds4 helping spread filling for a the layer cake.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bar mitzva kiddush:

• chocolate layer cake
• 6 layer strawberry cake
• orange marmalade layer cake
• oatmeal chocolate chip cookies
• chocolate dipped shortbread cookies
• chocolate chip loaf
• chocolate chip pie
• lemon pound cake
• checkerboard cake
• raspberry squares
• fudge crinkles
• chocolate cake
• carrot cake
• coconut snowballs
• chocolate balls
• marble cake
• cinnamon blondies
• peanut butter balls

A couple of people sent over yummy treats to put out, fancy looking concoctions that added a nice look to the dessert platters we put out, but I don’t know what they’re called.  We took everything over to the hall before Shabbos, and set up for the kiddush late Friday night, including arranging all the platters.  This was done by dd15, dd17, ds18, two 19 yo male guests, one 18yo female guest, dd11, and me.  They all did a great job making the platters look fabulous.  We covered the platters and put them on the tables, and the next morning we just had to uncover them when we got back from morning services.  Very low pressure.

I heard yesterday from three different people how nice the kiddush was, and how impressive the many kinds of cake were – each of them had been told about it by several other people!  That was very nice to hear, but we all felt good about how it went even before this – the tables looked nice and we had plenty for everyone.

200 challah rolls waiting to be baked

Bar mitzva meal:

First course -

• homemade challah rolls
• guacamole
• hummus
• Mediteranean chickpea salad
• tomato onion salad
• sweet carrot salad
• coleslaw
• cucumber salad
• cauliflower salad
• sweet-sour pepper salad with sesame seeds, almonds, craisins
• savory carrot salad

Main course -

• cholent (bean barley stew)
• chicken
• yerushalmi kugel (made by a friend)
• sweet noodle kugel (made by a friend)
• potato kugel
• kishke (baked stuffing)

Dessert -

• choice of lemon or strawberry pudding layer cake

We had the main meal in the same place as the kiddush, so we had to clear up from the kiddush before we could set up for the meal.  When we got there from morning services, we had an hour before the kiddush began, and I used that time to begin cutting up the kugels and warming them up.  A couple who came from Efrat for the bar mitzva came in to the kitchen to help, and cut up all the chicken, which was a big job.

After the kiddush, ds18 and three nineteen year old guests moved all the tables and chairs into place for the meal.  Initially I had planned to set up the food buffet style, but realized that though it sounded easier, it would end up much more chaotic.    So I decided to serve family style, which is what I do at home – I don’t like plating meals since I prefer for people to take the amount they want, of what they want.

Some younger guests who were around offered to help set the tables (their families were there for the kiddush and stayed for the meal) – I had so much help that I had to work hard to keep up with them all!  While the tables were being set up, I was preparing dishes of salad for each table, so that they could be put on the table before everyone sat down to eat.

For the main course, I put out the kugels on the platters while everyone was still eating the first course – I could have asked someone to come in and help, but particularly my older girls and our 18yo guest had done so much that I really didn’t want to ask them to do more.  They’re also entitled to enjoy the simcha!  This was a big change from the hectic help of before the meal, when I had at least eight girls between the ages of 6 – 12 who kept coming in and asking for things to do, in addition to the help of the older girls.  I kind of enjoyed the quiet; it wasn’t pressured at all.  While I was setting up these platters, the older girls came in to the kitchen and began taking platters out to the tables.

Once I sat down to enjoy the main course, I didn’t get back up again.  I let other people clear the serving platters and bring out individual plates of pudding cake, while I chatted with dear friends who came from Raanana.  I stayed there chatting for a couple of hours, and didn’t do anymore food prep until it was time for shalosh seudos.

At that point, we rearranged the tables and chairs – again! – and set up for an informal shalosh seudos – rather than individual place settings, I set up buffet style – a pile of plates, napkins, cups, a basket of challah rolls, and then large serving bowls of salads and platters of kugel (planned leftovers from the main lunch meal).  People began eating whenever they got there.

Then there was the final cleanup after Shabbos.  All in all, it was a lot of work, but it didn’t feel tense or overwhelming at any time.  And we were able to spend a lot less while getting a lot more.

How much did all of this cost?  Dh took out 1200 shekels from the ATM and that went towards food and miscellaneous bar mitzva costs that came up (in addition to using some of our regular food budget money) but I don’t have any idea how it breaks down – honestly, it seems to me like it was too much.  With all that was going on, we didn’t track the specific breakdown like we usually did.  We spent an additional 400 shekels on paper goods.  And the hall rental was 1100 shekels.

When figuring the total spent, I’m not taking into account that we have enough leftover chicken for another three or four Shabbosim, or any other leftovers that we’ll use at a different time (eg papergoods).  Without working out the actual cost of what we used only for the bar mitva itself, we spent a total of 2700 shekels for the hall rental and catering for the entire weekend – at today’s exchange rate, this is  equivalent to $715.

Considering that for our last bar mitzva over five years ago, we spent $1200 on catering for just the kiddush itself (and I already said how woefully inadequate the caterer’s provisions and set up were), we’re quite pleased that we were able to have the kind of event that we wanted without any compromises, while staying within a frugal budget!

Avivah

I wanted to upload the very fun video of this special surprise for ds13, and waited until dd17 was available since I wanted her help with editing it before posting.  Unfortunately, tonight she told me when she loaded the video along with all of the pictures from the bar mitzva onto her computer, there was a snafu and everything was deleted.  This really feels like a loss to me (and dd’s even more upset about it than me); the video captured a very special memory, and the pictures from the bar mitzva were the first ones of our family all together for over a year and a half which I had also looked forward to sharing here.  But I can still verbally describe the surprise to you!

Ds13 has been best friends with a certain boy since he was five years old.  It was very hard for him to say goodbye when we left America, and as a final parting comment to ds, his friend said with a big smile, “See you in a few months at the bar mitzva!”  Little did I know that this twelve year old really meant it.

He got a job every day after school and started saving all the money he earned towards his ticket.  He earned a substantial amount, and family members contributed the rest, knowing about his relationship with ds.  He arrived in Israel on Thursday, then was picked up from the airport by a relative.  Later in the afternoon, he traveled by bus from Jerusalem to here with the daughter of a very good friend of mine who is studying here for the year, who was also coming for the bar mitzva.

(By the way, this arrangement was made totally without my involvement or mentioning any names or details to either of the parties involved, which was wild.  This young lady mentioned her plans for the weekend to the daughter of a friend of ds13′s best friend’s grandmother – or something like that – and someone along the line figured out that the twelve year old boy coming from the US was going to the same bar mitzva as this girl, so they arranged for him to meet her so he wouldn’t have to travel alone.  The statistical likelihood of this connection being made in the few hours after his arrival is very small, but it just goes to show what a small country this is!)

So ds’s friend called to ask me what the scenario for the surprise would be, and I told him it was his surprise, and he should tell me what he wanted to do.  We worked out that dd17 and ds13 would meet the bus a few minutes after it arrived, giving his friend a chance to hide and then trail them back to our house.  Then he would knock at the door, I’d have ds answer it, and voila – the surprise!

But then I thought, what if his friend lost sight of them?  I didn’t want him to get lost on the way!  So I slightly rearranged it so that dd15 would leave a few minutes early, meet the friend, and then they’d wait together a few minutes for the the other two kids to meet the seminary girl.  And, I thought, if ds answered the door, none of the rest of us would be able to see his reaction.  So I’d have to have his friend come into the main living area where we’d all see the reunion.

I asked him to call when he arrived so I could send dd15 to meet him, and he did.  I sent everyone out as planned, staggering it so ds13 wouldn’t see dd15 going out, but when they got to the bus stop, no one was there!  They finally came home without our guests; a short time later our guests called, it turns out they’d gotten off a stop early and gone into the local mall.

So we sent everyone out again.  Dd17 and ds13 returned with the suitcase of both guests (ds thinking they both belonged to the girl – I told him he should go along to help bring everything), and then a few minutes later, there was a muffled knock at the door.  I answered it, and there was his friend!  I motioned him to come in, and went back to the living room without giving any indication of anything.  Ds13 was on the couch looking at a magazine, not having heard the light tapping at the door.

His friend waited a couple of minutes while peering out at ds from around the wall of the entrance hallway, suddenly dashed toward him on the couch, jumping with a big plop next to him with his arm around his shoulders.  Ds13 got a slightly annoyed look, as if, ‘which of my little siblings is pestering me now?’, and looked up to tell whoever it was to stop.  And then he looked right into his best friend’s face!  He was so shocked that he looked almost dazed, then gave him a big hug while he kept repeating, “Oh my gosh, what are you doing here?”

It was really beautiful; in the video you could see ds18 in the background watching with a big smile, and my mom smiling on the sidelines, but all of us watching had big smiles.  The older girls knew about the surprise for a while, and ds18 learned about it when they all went out to meet the bus.  Watching this video afterwards, I got very choked up, and so did my mom.  Dd7, who videoed their meeting,without knowing what was going to happen, managed to catch all of it from the beginning to end, and you could really feel the emotion of it all, even without sound.

I’ll share more about the bar mitzva in my next post, but to say it enhanced the occasion for ds13 would be minimize the experience.  My older kids said that it’s strange that while so much has changed and we’re living in Israel now, somehow it seems perfectly normal to see the two of them together here – it’s just the same as always, but in a different country!

This morning they left to spend a few days in Jerusalem together – they gave us a basic itinerary of what they want to do, but I’m sure that wherever they go, they’ll have an amazing time together!

Avivah

Today has been a busy day from the minute I woke up!

My mom was scheduled to arrive at 5:30 am today, but we don’t have any way to get to the airport that early.  The trains run through the night, but buses don’t, and from our city, we have to take a bus to connect with the train.  So dd17 went to Haifa last night, spent the evening with friends, and got up super early to take the train to the airport in Tel Aviv.

My mom arrived at 6 am, and at 7:45, just after ds12 and I were commenting that she and dd17 must already be on the train to come home, I got a call from her – dd didn’t show up.  This was a little concerning since dd is super responsible, and I knew she planned to take a train that would get her in by 6 am.  This call coincided with the littles needing to leave to school and  my husband needing to leave to a job interview, so there was a bit too much going on for a very overtired me (I woke up so tired that I told myself I’d take a nap as soon as the littles went to school – but I didn’t) for me to feel relaxed while I was trying to figure out what to do.  After my first frantic thoughts of ‘oh, no’, I suggested to my mom that she wait another 45 minutes and then if dd wasn’t there, I’d come get her (about a three hour trip in each direction).

Fortunately it wasn’t long before we got a call that they met each other in the airport – there was a mix up about where we had said the meeting place would be, and though they were both there for over two hours by that point, dd had been sticking to the agreed on meeting place and my mom was walking around, so they kept missing each other.  A little frustrating but the main thing is they found each other!

Back at home, dd15 and I were planning to use the day to do the bulk of the cooking for the bar mitzva this Shabbos.  We prepared a number of salads, chicken, and desserts; though there are more things left for tomorrow morning than I had planned (I only wanted to bake challah then), it’s not overwhelming.   Dd17 made a few more beautiful layer cakes after I listed what we were baking last week, and dd15 made a couple of large pudding layer cakes for lunch dessert (one strawberry, one lemon).

Ds12 went with dh to get a suit in Haifa last week, and he was so happy with the place he raved about it to his older brother.  So they agreed it would be a good place to go for ds18 to freshen up his wardrobe, plus ds18 wanted to buy some things for ds12.  Ds18 came directly from Jerusalem to Haifa, and ds13 took the bus there to meet him; they spent the whole day there together.

I went down to the hall we’re renting for the weekend to get the keys and got into a conversation with a man in his eighties who works there.  He told me how Orthodox Jewish women are oppressed, and how women are treated better in the secular world – this was spurred by his question about why we were renting the hall, and when I said a bar mitzva, he said to the other person working there, a foreign worker who wasn’t sure a bar mitzva was for a boy or girl,”it’s for a boy’, they don’t care about the girls”.)  I don’t mind talks like these, as long as people are reasonable.  After about twenty minutes I told him I had to get home before my mom arrived from the airport, and invited him to join us at the bar mitzva reception on Shabbos morning.  Very nice man – before I left he told me how unusual it is for someone ‘secular’ like him to be able to openly speak to someone ‘religious’ like me.  He’s right, and that’s a shame that we allow ourselves to build walls between ourselves and others who have different lifestyles than us – we’re all just people trying to live life as best as we can.

My mom and dd17 finally got home at noon (we were originally expecting them by 10 am), and of course my mom immediately unpacked all the stuff she had brought for us.  She really spent a lot of time looking for things she knew we needed, and I appreciated all of her time and effort.  It’s not easy to shop for someone else, particularly for things that involve personal taste.  (My mom and I have different styles, as do I and my girls!)  She didn’t hit the bullseye entirely but she did really well, and even if she hadn’t, I would still appreciate the enormous amount of time she spent going to different places to get things she thought I would need.

Ds13 came home from his day with ds18 a little before dinner time, and my mom gave him a couple of cards and gifts from friends in the US that they asked her to deliver.  He told me it was the best day he could think of and listed all the things that made it so nice!  I didn’t tell him that his day was going to be getting even better later that evening, when he got a huge surprise for his bar mitzva.  (I’ll post about this in detail when I have time to upload the video of when he saw his surprise.)

This morning, dd15 said that we should have made 2 ‘to do’ lists; one for us, and for to give out jobs to people who keep calling to ask what they can do to help!  That’s something I really appreciate about living in Israel – people truly want to help in some way and be involved.  In the last couple of days I’ve had a few people ask me what they could cook or bake for me, and today got three more requests to help.  These aren’t necessarily all coming from people I know well – I don’t know many people here well – but from people I’ve gotten to know on a casual basis (three of ds4 and ds5′s teachers have all repeatedly offered to help).  I had things pretty much organized by this point, though dd15 pointed out that I could have asked them to make dips, since I only have a couple of those so far.  And those who asked before I had it all cooked/baked myself are definitely helping out – two of the three kugels we’re serving for the lunch meal are being prepared by other people.

Just three weeks ago, I was feeling so ‘blah’ about this bar mitzva, feeling alone and lonely, and now I’m in such a different headspace.  I’m so warmly appreciative about every one of our guests coming from outside of Karmiel to spend Shabbos with us, and look forward to seeing many more people at the reception.

For the meal following the reception, despite out efforts to keep things small, our count has gone from 50 to 70 (this happens very easily since for a Shabbos meal you’re inviting entire families rather than couples – we had to really limit this since it could get huge so quickly) , so dh had to go out today to buy more groceries.  It’s still pretty small though, relatively.

Thankfully, our plans seem to be moving along nicely even though I don’t feel like I’m especially busy – I mentally predicted I’d be running at top speed to get everything done in time these last couple of days.  I know that tomorrow there will probably be a good number of little details that fall below my radar that may not get done until it’s too late to do anything about them, and I’ve mentally told myself it’s okay.  Better to be a pleasant and calm person than to stress about having every single detail exactly as I want, if it looks like those details aren’t happening as I would like.  It’s so easy to lose sight of why you’re doing all of this, and get tense and irritable with those you love the most – I don’t want that to be me.

Avivah

This morning my husband came home with our mail – our mailbox is about a five minute walk away, in a direction we don’t usually go in, so we check it about once a week.

Thanks to my new subscription to the Shaar Hamatchil, the easy Hebrew language newspaper, I have been an educated Israeli citizen for the last three weeks.  (Said tongue in cheek.)  On last week’s front page was an article about a new law that just passed – the mandatory age for school children has been dropped from 5 to 3.  Currently, children who are in kindergarten in Israel have fully subsidized education, and apparently beginning in the coming year, three year olds will have their full day daycare experience paid for by taxpayer dollars as well (it’s not clear to me if this would apply to the programs that end at 1 pm).  Yay!  You can just hear the cheers around the  nation.

Anyway, I’m not going to go into my thoughts about if this is a good thing or not.  Obviously if you would have to pay these funds privately and now you don’t, you’ll be happy.  And it’s not clear to me that the government is lowering the mandatory school starting age with this law or not, which would be a bad thing since lowered starting ages doesn’t correlate well with national academic success.

Here’s something that struck me as interesting and ironic, though.  In our mail we received approval for ds12′s hot lunch program that we filed and paid for in August.  Not so speedy processing, but nothing new for government agencies.  And as parents of a child who will be three in the coming school year, we also received a registration form for school.  Now how in the world could an incredibly inefficient government pass the law just one week ago, and already have the forms in my mailbox?  This seems strange to me, and though there are lots of areas of government in which increased efficiency would be welcome, I’m wondering about this incredible and unusual efficiency for a brand new law.  I’m guessing it was a done deal for a while now and they were just waiting for the official vote to roll it out.

I can’t help but wonder how this new law will affect the choices of parents who might otherwise consider keeping their child home at this age.  And since it seems the law applies to full day daycare, will more people opt for the longer day? After all, it’s nice to have the kids out of the house and it gives us more time at home to get things done without them being in the way – and it’s paid for, so why not?

Earlier this year, ds18 commented to me that it must be pretty dull for ds2 to be home alone with me, after being used to the stimulation of so many siblings and constant action who were home all day.  Then one day he was home with the two of us when everyone else was in school, and he told me clearly saw how nice it was for ds2 to be home.   Not because I do anything exciting – I do the same basic things as everyone, getting the house in order, cooking, some errands.  People constantly talk about how important stimulation is for young children, they rarely talk about the need of a child for quiet space.  Being constantly stimulated is not a good thing.

In any case, these aren’t forms I’ll be filling in and sending out!

Avivah

We’ve had a couple of wonderfully rainy weeks here.  This does come along with some potential downsides when you’re used to free solar energy!

The laundry hasn’t been easy to stay on top of, despite having two freestanding racks that can be kept indoors since I posted about living without a dryer.  But the bigger issue has been hot water.  For the last couple of months, our electric hot water heater (which is turned on by demand) hasn’t been working too well.  Then a couple of weeks ago, it stopped working entirely.

With no sun overhead for two weeks and no way to electrically heat the water, this wasn’t so fun!  The biggest issues were showers, so we compensated by fewer showers (which isn’t really such a big deal in the winter) and heating water on our gas stove.  Yesterday, the electrician came out to see what needed to be done, and found the heating element had burnt out.  That had burnt out the switch, so he replaced both of them.  He also replaced the thermostat.

These repairs weren’t very complicated but took place over three days – we learned that “I’ll be back in a minute” could (and did!) mean leaving one morning and coming back the next afternoon!  But last night, when the repair had finally been done….bliss!  Steaming hot showers for a reasonable amount of time (versus get in and out as fast as you can before the warmish water runs out), so nice!

You really do appreciate things more when you haven’t had them for a while!

Avivah

I’ve hardly written anything about our bar mitzva preparations, and it’s just a week away now!

Here are our basic plans: we’ll be having a meal on Friday night for family and any guests who are coming from out of town.  That will be around 25 people, so not a major crowd.   Then Shabbos (Sabbath) morning, ds12 will be called to read the Torah at a local synagogue, and we’ll be having a kiddush/ dessert reception for everyone.  (I can’t even guess at numbers for this.)

Following that, we’ll be having a meal for family, ds12′s classmates, and close friends  - this will be around 50 – 60 people.  Then later on, we’ll have the third meal for our family and out of town guests, so again, about 25 people.

Since we’re doing all the cooking and baking ourselves, as well as setup, etc, this has been a busy week and next week will be even busier!  Here’s what we did this week:

• Dh took ds to Haifa to buy a suit (they bought a hat over a month ago on a trip to Bnei Brak, along with his tefillin).
• Dh designed the invitations and printed them out, and they were given to classmates this week.  (Everyone else will get an email invite or verbal notice.)
• Yesterday I bought almost all of the paper goods for the meals and reception.
• Dd15 and dd17 did almost all of the baking for the kiddush/reception.  It doesn’t seem like so much to me, but we were told that fifteen cakes is usually enough.

This includes (all pans are equal to 2 9 x 13 pan unless otherwise noted): 2 dark chocolate cakes, 2 carrot cakes, 2 chocolate chip crumb cakes (loaf pans), 4 lemon pound cakes (loaf pans), 1 marble cake, 1 raspberry bars, oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, coconut snowballs, chocolate dipped shortbread cookies, and fudge crinkles.  In the works tonight are: checkboard cake, 3 lay orange cake with buttercream frosting and topped with homemade orange marmalade, lemon bars, and maybe shortcake if someone will go out to buy some more round pans at the store tonight!

I would like to have a couple of fancy frosted cakes in addition to the platters to dress up the tables, but the logisitics are a little challenging.  We only have a fridge sized freezer, but thankfully a neighbor has offered us her fridge sized freezer, so tomorrow I’m hoping to take all of the baked goods over since I’m maxed out for space at this point – and I haven’t even started cooking any food for the three meals!

The fancy cakes have to carefully stored and take a good bit of space, or have to be assembled a short time before they are served.  Since we’ll have about three hours on Friday afternoon to get all of the food for the entire weekend to the hall, pick up electric hotplates to use to heat the food on Shabbos, set up all the tables, heat the food, accompany our guests to the homes of their hosts – and we don’t have a car! – it’s going to be a busy three hours.  On Shabbos morning we have to be at shul by 8:30 am in order to hear the reading of the Torah by ds12, then will go straight there to set up the kiddush, followed by immediate cleanup and then setup for the meal.  I’m not seeing where the extra time to put together a three layer cake is going to happen, and it would be such a shame to put the time into making it now, and having it get smushed in the freezer.

Dd17 enjoys baking really nice looking cakes, and just about every day we have a conversation in which she suggests making something beautiful and time consuming, and I veto it and remind her the point is to keep it simple so we don’t get stressed out.  I was trying to explain the logistics to a couple of the kids tonight, so they could see the big picture that I’m looking at of everything that has to be done, to understand why I keep rejecting certain suggestions – but I think that they won’t really understand what I’m talking about until we’re in the middle of giving baths to the littles, haircut to ds, ironing everyone’s clothes, getting our house clean, in addition to everything else, that they’ll start to realize what I was talking about.  I also love when things look super nice, and if I had a better set up that would allow me to prepare and store things in advance, I would do more along these lines.

I’d like to serve some kind of kugel, vegetable platters and dips in addition to the desserts, but particularly the dips will complicate the cleanup, and whatever I end up adding will be because I found lots of extra time and energy that I hadn’t budgeted for something else!  Not so likely, but not impossible, either.  :)

Then there’s the three Shabbos meals, for which everything will be cooked towards the end of the week, so that it will be fresh.  It’s nice that we rented a place that we can use for not just the kiddush, but will be able to have all of meals in one place.  This wasn’t part of the original plan, but we decided on this a couple of weeks ago.  It will really help us keep things simple since I won’t have to juggle between hosting and serving in our home for two meals, and then in another place for the main bar mitzva meal.

Also, we’re not going to have more than three guests staying in our home for the weekend, and they’re all people we’re comfortable with and can be relaxed around.   There aren’t many people coming from outside of Karmiel, but we are deeply grateful to everyone of them for being willing to make the effort to share our celebration with us.

As far as our budget, I might be wildly unrealistic about this because I haven’t bought the food for the weekend meals yet, but I’m hoping to keep the food expenses within our usual monthly food budget of 2000 shekels or close to it (this obviously means being super frugal with our usual expenditures).  So far just about all of the baking supplies have been purchased and it’s looking optimistic.  I’ll keep track of all of my receipts so I can give you an accurate idea later on of how much our self-catered bar mitzva was.  :)

Avivah

I started writing this post over a year and a half ago, and I had to smile when I recently checked my drafts file, since so many of the topics that I wrote about then are still things I think about!

There’s a lot of strong opinion on the topic of ideal spacing of one’s children.  This is a highly personal decision that is fraught with emotion – I know I’ve had a negative knee jerk reaction to reading some of what is written on this topic, and I’ve had to remind myself that people are entitled to do whatever is right for them.

I’d like to address to a particular sentiment regularly expressed by real food devotees, the nutritional argument.  Those in the real food camp (where I consider myself) try to follow traditional food practices – to eat food as it was eaten for generations, because this has been key in the health of many generations.   As we’ve gotten away from this inherent wisdom of our bodies, our collective health has suffered.

Many people have noted the significant spacing between children in traditional societies, and felt that this is important to implement in our lives.  This is in order to give a mother time in which she can rebuild her nutritional stores after being depleted by pregnancy (and breastfeeding).  An unborn child can only ‘take’ from the reserves that the mother has in store; if it’s not there, his body won’t be able to use it.  And by carefully spacing one’s children, each child can be granted his “birthright of perfect health” (sorry, lost the complete Sally Fallon quote I wanted to share with you).

Now obviously, since I’ve had nine children born within fifteen years,  you don’t have to be a math whizzard to work out that I haven’t followed the ideal child spacing of three to four years between children!    And I’m not going to be an apologist for that.  Rather, I want to question what I perceive to be a dogmatic belief that ideal nutrition trumps the value of bringing children into the world, as well as the idea that you can eliminate any variables in the development of an unborn child.

(Parenthetically, something that is usually not mentioned when making the argument about what traditional societies did regarding child spacing, is that this was accomplished in large part because men had several wives and weren’t intimate with each wife for a lengthy period of time after childbirth.  True, we can replicate traditional spacing by using birth control rather than polygamy, but long term usage of chemical birth control (versus natural family planning) comes with it’s own related health concerns.  (Edited to add: how timely that after posting this I saw Kelly’s post about the dangers of birth control!  Definitely take a look so you can see some of the issues involved.)

There are those who feel passionately enough about this topic that they are willing to not have another child at all if it means that he won’t be conceived from a position of nutritional strength.  I respect that this is their belief and priority, and there would be a lack of integrity for someone who believed this to make any different choice.  For me, it’s not a choice I have chosen, even knowing all that I do about how prenatal nutrition affects a growing child.

I’m going to write a post (hopefully sooner rather than later!) detailing the physical differences that I’ve noted in the  jaw structure of each of our nine children depending on what I ate during pregnancy as well as birth order.  And though I can see that some have better facial bone structure than others, I don’t believe in even the tiniest part of me that because one had teeth that were more crowded than another and needed braces, that I shortchanged them or made a mistake by bringing them into this world.

I believe that there’s an inherent value to having a child, a spiritual piece of eternity that a mother can be part of.  That doesn’t mean that no matter what your current reality is, that having a baby is a good idea right now.  As I said earlier, this is an extremely personal decision and I can only share the criteria that I personally use in determining if pregnancy is a good idea at this time – a woman’s physical and emotional readiness to nurture a child.

While there are nutritional concerns that the expectant mother would benefit by addressing when children are close in age by being particularly careful that she has a high nutrient diet,  I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that there are benefits to a mother and child to being spaced more closely.  Each child has a constant playmate and companion, which often develops into a close relationship that is maintained over the years.  When children are each other’s entertainment, this makes the physical aspect of parenting much easier than for a mom of a singleton or those who are widely spaced.

A mother absolutely should not deplete herself  to the point that she has nothing left to give.  But there’s a lot of ground between absolute physical exhaustion, and striving for the physical perfection of child.  It’s this sentiment of idealizing perfection that I’m disturbed by in the real food community.  I’m not a fan of striving for perfection in any area, since I think it’s stressful, depleting, guilt inducing, and not productive.  (Excellence, yes, but definitely not perfection!)

It’s true that the mother of closely spaced children isn’t likely to be able to replenish her nutritional stores like someone who has worked on it assiduously for several years without the draw from pregnancy.  However, let’s not forget that there’s plenty a woman can do to eat well during pregnancy to improve her unborn baby’s health.  This is not an all of nothing process.  (I’ve written about guidelines for high quality prenatal nutrition here.)

And on the other side of the equation, there are no guarantees in life.  There’s a conviction in the real food camp that if you eat well enough, nothing can go wrong with your child’s prenatal development.  Guess what?  It doesn’t always work like that.  It’s wonderful that there are so many things that we can affect with good nutrition, and this is very empowering.  But there are always going to be potential issues we can’t control for, as comforting as it is to think that we can.

What do you think the ideal child spacing is?  How has that worked for you and your children?  

Avivah

(This post is part of Monday Mania, Real Food 101, Fat Tuesday, Traditional Tuesdays, and Real Food Wednesdays.)

>>my son (2.5) takes 3 hours to go to sleep now- he finds any excuse to come out of his room, and if i lock the door he screams and i cant bare it. hell ask for food, tissues, bandaids and anything else.  PLEASE any advice is gold right now!<<

I wouldn’t suggest locking the door when your son goes to bed, since it’s a scary thing for a child.  It’s much better to leave it open when he goes to sleep so he can see that even though he’s going to sleep, you are still there for him.

Here are a couple of things to consider before taking any action steps: is he tired when you put him to bed?  Is he taking a long or late nap during the day and he’s really not ready for sleep later in the evening?  If not, maybe he needs to take a shorter nap during the day, more time outdoors in the afternoon to burn off some energy, or more of a bedtime ritual to help him unwind.  If he’s tired and ready for sleep when bedtime comes around, go on to the next thing below.

The next issue is to be sure that bedtime is positive and not punitive.  Look, none of us want to stop doing something we’re enjoying, and for little kids, it’s more fun to be awake than to go to bed.  So we have to make an effort for bedtime to be nice time together.  To start, maybe you can sit next to him for a little while when he goes to bed so he doesn’t feel that bedtime means a sudden big separation.

Then, once you’re doing the bedtime ritual with a child who is tired and ready for bed, he needs to see you’re consistently having the same expectations of bedtime.  Before he goes to sleep, offer him a drink and remind him that once he’s in bed that’s it.  If he asks for something once he’s in bed, tell him pleasantly but firmly, ‘Now it’s time for bed, tomorrow when you wake up you can have a (whatever it is).’

Broken record with this – he needs to keep getting the same response again and again, without you escalating emotionally or verbally.  You don’t have to say this forever – if you’ve had enough after three times, you can tell him, “Mommy said we’re not getting/having that right now. Mommy’s not going to talk about it anymore.’  And then don’t talk about it. Just sit quietly next to him and put your finger to your lips with a little bit of a smile (so you don’t look mean and threatening) if he says something.

Can you visualize this?  Firm and loving.

Good luck!

Avivah

I’ve been feeling kind of down lately, and went to sleep last night feeling especially discouraged.  There are a few reasons for that, one of which is that during cold weather it gets into my bones and I feel like huddling under a blanket all day.  (This is definitely related to living in a stone building without insulation or heating.)  Because it’s cold people stay inside more, so then I feel socially isolated and as a person who is energized by interacting with others, I get down when I spend so long hardly seeing anyone outside of my family.  That’s the reality of the winter – when I feel warm and I can see people when I go out, I feel like a different person.

But a bigger reason is that I’ve been allowing lots of negative and self-defeating thoughts to enter my mind and particularly because of the above situation, those thoughts have been finding fertile soil.  Usually I shake it off pretty quickly and wasn’t going to share about any of this, but then I thought that it would be good for people to realize that we all struggle sometimes.  People have often told me how positive and upbeat I am, but you know what?  It doesn’t always come naturally, and sometimes I have to really work at it.

So what are some of those negative thoughts that were having free reign running through my mind?  How lazy I am, unproductive, and not accomplishing anything with my life.  Then from there I went on to think about how so many people in the world are able to motivate themselves to do something impressive with their life, and I’m not.  And I won’t, because I don’t have all their strengths and I’m too busy and too tired.  And too busy making excuses about how busy and tired I am when if I really tried, I could be doing more.

Then I went on to think how everyone else has so many friends and family that care about them, and I don’t.  This has been exacerbated by the reality that my husband and I come from very small families with just one second cousin living in the same country as us, we’re living in a new community where we mostly know people in a casual way, and we’re making a bar mitva in a week and a half that will reflect that.

And yuck, look at how out of shape I’m getting.  I haven’t exercised for a few weeks (since I use a dvd on the computer and dh is now using my computer all day long), and of course when I’m in this kind of mood I won’t count my daily half hour walk to get my littles from school or the fact that my stamina is better than it has been for a long time.

So this is kind of how the negative cycle in my mind sometimes sounds, usually most focused on not feeling like I’m accomplishing anything in my life and not so much the latter two issues.  Basically grappling with my identity as a full-time mother.  A few weeks ago I was at a reception when the grandmother of the honoree spoke, and she said something that I really appreciated hearing.  She said that her children have often told her how accomplished she is, but to her, there’s nothing in her life that has been a bigger accomplishment than raising her children.

Afterwards I went over and thanked her, and told her I was struggling to find value in all that I do every day, since mothering isn’t recognized by the outside world at all.  But this is really the area where I’m most invested at this stage of my life and where I’ll be invested for the foreseeable future.  I told her that the messages from the outside that I needed to be making money or earning a name for myself in some public way sometimes find a foothold in my mind, and it’s hard to continually pat your own back and reassure yourself that what you’re doing is important.   Particularly since I don’t think I’m doing such an outstanding job as a mother right now – I feel adequate, but not amazing (which is how I usually feel).    Parenting is a long term project and there aren’t major milestones on a weekly or monthly basis that you can check off and know you’ve done well.

She told me she had a similar struggle since she has a sister who has a very successful career, and just being able to honestly speak to someone about this feeling I had, and to hear her validate it and share her own perspective from a lifetime of looking back at what was truly valuable, really was encouraging to me.  This is the kind of message I need to periodically remind myself of when I’m getting too focused on the short term view.

What else do I find helpful in breaking the cycle of negative thinking?  Writing a gratitude list – I’ve been doing this somewhat irregularly since I was 17, and have found it very valuable in keeping me focused on all of my blessings instead of what I lack.  I also mentally make gratitude lists, but I don’t find this as effective – there’s something about writing things down that makes them register mentally at a deeper level.

I have to consciously fill my mind with positive thoughts at times like this, even when it’s the last thing I feel like thinking of.  It’s like reprogramming my brain so it will automatically run good programs even when I’m not trying.

Can you identify with any of this?  How have you resolved any of these feelings for yourself?

Avivah