9/25/11

Identifying Your Life’s Mission

Identifying Your Life’s Mission

The above article (by Sara Yocheved Rigler and appearing this week on Aish.com) explains how to find your "tafkid," that little sliver of the world that constitutes your mission in life. I encourage you to read it before Rosh HaShanah. I found it very inspirational and the perfect complement to a shiur I attended over the weekend.

Rabbi Simcha Weinberg was visiting our shul over this Shabbos. At seudat shlisheet, he explained that the Yomim Noraim (the Days of Awe) are the when we should not only think about what we've done wrong in the past year, but what would it look like if we did it right in the year ahead. He suggested that we should not imagine what we want, but what HaShem's dream is for us. What does He want from us? Then we can establish some steps to take to get us there.

Of course, He wants us to make peace with other Jews (including family members!). Of course, He wants us to improve in how we follow his mitzvot.

But He also wants us to be the best people we can be, using our talents and skills. The article by Sara Yocheved Rigler will inspire you to do just that. What gets you excited about life? How can you use that talent and passion to improve your family, your community, your world?


9/21/11

Sifriyat Pijama B' America begins!

My daughter received her first book through Sifriyat Pijama B' America (which distributes free Hebrew language materials to American children, particularly those with Israeli parents or grandparents) this week. The first selection was Lea Goldberg's classic Hayeled Hara (The Bad Boy). My children enjoyed the story--about a boy who blames his naughty behavior on the "bad boy" inside him--and found the illustrations quite charming. The directions for parents explain the book connects to the mishnah in Pirke Avos about "Who is the strong man? The one who controls his inclination (for bad)." The message fits perfectly into this season of Elul, where we are supposed to carefully consider our actions and resolve to do better in the coming year. I'm going to see if I can get my bigger kids to read it to the little ones for their own Hebrew language practice.

I should point out that not only are the Sifriyat Pijama B' America books in Hebrew (with nekudot), but the parent directions are in Hebrew, too. There was hardly any English at all in the entire package. The result: a little fumbling around with a English-Ivrit dictionary in the Klempner household before we could introduce the book to our children.

The program is now at capacity, but will add new members in December. You can get on the waiting list here:

9/18/11

Soundtrack to the novel I'm working on

(picture by Thunder Circus on Flickr)

I've been wasting a lot of my precious post-bedtime lately. I'm supposed to be finishing my book, but I find myself listening to groovy music instead. In theory, it's helping identify with various characters and create atmosphere, but honestly, I'm still pretty much avoiding real work. Here are some highlights.

"Infinity" by Shtar

"Running Away" by Matisyahu (cover of a Bob Marley song)

"I Can't Be with You" by the Cranberries (female vocalist)

the Diwon remix of "Acharon Acharon, Chaviv" by Lipa Shmeltzer

"You are Never Alone" by Socalled

"Chalomot shel Acherim" by the Idan Raichel Project

"Rachmana" by Ta-Shma

"The Only One" by Moshav

"Down in the Now" by the Crystal Method (with Matisyahu)

9/15/11

Who's the bad guy?

My eldest son asked me the following question earlier this evening: "Ima, why does everyone call Mr. MacGregor a bad guy?" He was, of course, referring to Mr. MacGregor, the nemesis of Peter Rabbit and Benjamin Bunny.

We had a very interesting little conversation after that--about how Peter Rabbit's father had been killed and eaten by Mr. MacGregor, but also about how the farmer's actions were justified, given the bunnies' acts of thievery and trespass. And Peter Rabbit--despite the short coat, shiny brass buttons, and shoes--is nevertheless a rabbit. So long as you're not Jewish, it is perfectly appropriate to eat our little floppy-eared friends.

Now I find myself contemplating other much-maligned characters in childhood classics. The fish in The Cat in the Hat is much more morally upright than the Cat, but the Cat's the one who everyone dresses up as for Purim (or Halloween). And what about the wolf who ate the three little pigs? He's just doing what wolves do...eat other animals.

Recently a whole genre of fairy tale retellings--where the "villain" is frequently exonerated--has developed. Maybe Mr. MacGregor will get to set the record straight, after all.


9/11/11

Shall we play a funeral dirge?

Yes, it's time to break out a little Chopin funeral march.

Tiras Cham (Hebrew)

Two of our favorite Hebrew picture books have been officially loved to death: the classic Tiras Cham and HaShalom shel Michael. Their tattered pages are currently being mourned by the members of the Klempner household.

This event has sent me on a new adventure: finding new copies. I've been successful at finding Tiras Cham. That book is so popular in Israel that Steimatsky there sells Tiras Cham-themed pajamas (possible Chanukah gifts for my little ones?) and you can easily purchase books through their website. However, HaShalom shel Michael is nowhere to be found on the internet. It's like it never existed. I've tried transliterating in a variety of ways and even translating despite my relatively poor Hebrew skills (Should that be Michael's Hello or Michael's Greeting?). Zilch!

I'm a little traumatized. Perhaps I'll patch up the sad, dilapidated pages that have fallen out of the binding and onto the floor. It's such a beautiful story, all about greeting everyone with a "panim yafot," as Shammai suggests in Pirkei Avot. I highly recommend the book to everyone...if you can just find a copy!

My time isn't a total loss. The plus side is that I discovered a neat-o blog about Hebrew language education with some nifty things in it (like an art project/lesson plan to go with another Israel classic, HaBayit Shel Yael):
http://inoursmallgarden.wordpress.com/childrens-books/
Then that blog led me to another:
http://www.dafdaf.co.il/
And another!
http://www.internationalchildbook.com/hebrewlanguage/1318031?page_483032555=2
And yet another!
http://justhebrew.com/

9/7/11

Almost (but only almost!)


(photo by Ian Britton)

Well, my goal for the summer was to finish my first solo effort at a novel and...I didn't quite finish.

Ugh.

I'm probably just 3,000 words shy of a complete first draft. After ditching my original draft of "Part 3," I had a good think and outlined a new path for the rest of the book. However, I'm having problems bringing myself to sit down and finish.

What's my excuse? Instead of spending quality time with my keyboard, I've been spending quality time with humans (my husband and kids, now back in school), and I've been actively looking for more freelance work.  I finished a writing project last week and submitted something else. It's not like I've been wasting time doing nothing. On the other hand, I have wasted a lot of time blogging, reading weird science news (justifying it as research), and listening to music that's too noisy for effectively focusing on a computer screen.

It's time for a completely non-professional attempt at psychoanalyzing myself. I definitely need to figure out why I don't just sit down for a couple nights and crank out the rest so I can get over it.

1) I used to write for fun. It was relaxing, and even escapist. I still love writing. I'm still very enthusiastic about this project. However, writing has been reclassified in my brain over the last 9 months as a professional exercise and not a hobby. It's actually work.

2) I think I'm a little freaked out about finishing the first draft because I know it will be...a first draft. Like, not perfect. Like, potentially terrible. I guess I have to just accept that it will start out that way, but trust that it'll eventually improve.

9/1/11

Interesting perspective on modesty

Tzniut, or modesty, is an important topic for those who adopt a Torah-true lifestyle. I was attracted to Randa Abdel-Fattah's book, Does My Head Look Big In This?, because it addresses this very issue from the Muslim perspective. I thought it would be interesting to see how a Muslim writer handled it as opposed to the Jewish writers I'm already familiar with.



Amal, a teenager in Australia, decides to begin to wear the hijab (traditional Muslim headcovering) full-time even though she attends a very White prep school. The saga of how her choice impacts more and more of her life flows logically. Amal is a very likable narrator and explains the ideology behind the hijab and other Muslim practices beautifully, and they are very much in harmony with the views of traditional Judaism. I appreciated that we see both the ups and downs along Amal's journey, and that she stays firm on her decision at the conclusion of the book.
Amal, like most teenagers, is OBSESSED with movies, television, Cosmo, celebrity gossip, etc. We see Amal's parents telling her that these pop-culture icons are nonsense, but we don't see her very moved by this. Amal never seems to really get that celebrity culture and fashion magazines are completely the opposite of what the hajib stands for. Some of the trouble she must deal with is actually created by her involvement in mainstream culture. She keeps watching "Friends" even though the characters make life decisions incompatible with Islam, and she compulsively does Cosmo quizzes and uses the magazine's advice to flirt with boys even though she will not date them. I wish the book would have been more insightful about how our society feeds into immodesty, and how it's healthy to step out of that largely-immoral media mix.


Most Orthodox Jews would tell you that the solution is to retreat from secular media, to varying degrees. It's common to monitor our children's television viewing (or ban it from the house altogether), restrict what movies they see, limit internet access, and the like. Many frum children aren't permitted to use cell phones, or the phones do not have text access. And many Orthodox Jews send their children to schools with separate girls' and boys' departments, if not entirely separate schools. I know that many Muslims adopt such strategies (none of which is perfect, but which help)...what puzzles me is that Ms. Abdel-Fattah doesn't bring them up (except that Amal's parents disapprove of Cosmo, so she has to sneak it into the house).
There are fleeting mentions of political beliefs that most Jewish readers will disagree with (there are a couple references to the Palestinian-Israeli dilemma); however, none of these are obnoxious, argumentative, or deeply offensive. There is mutual respect between all sorts of characters (it's very nice that Jewish characters are portrayed favorably, with a marked distinction between politics and religion, although as an Orthodox Jew, I flinched when the Jewish kid falls for a non-Jew). 


Two things cause me to hesitate from recommending Does This Make My Head Look Big? to every Bais Yaakov girl, though: 


I was surprised that there is some swearing in the book (no F-bombs, though, I think), and there is some frank talk about how Amal's beliefs address sexuality and women's body image, although nothing graphic. However, I think that this book would be a very good read for many young women or even teachers/parents of young women. I think that the book has a lot of insights that are unlikely to be found in a YA novel published by a frum publishing house, and I think the fictional format is particularly useful in approaching this audience. I hope this book's pro-modesty message will reach teens that wouldn't normally pick up an Orthodox Jewish book.