As central as children and family are in the Jewish world, there really isn’t that many parenting books. I was even surprised how few books there are on the halacha related to raising children, especially babies. (There are a fair number of books on chinuch, as in teaching Jewish law and practice to your children, but those have seemed to me often limited to just ritual practice matters and often skewed toward male children, based on perusal in bookstores. Having girls, I haven’t bothered to buy any yet but probably will soon enough.) But when I asked around for the halachic considerations of having a newborn, the response was overwhelmingly:
Friend/Facebook: What do you mean? What’s there to know?
Me: Like halacha of kids. I’ve heard people talking about how you need to change diapers differently on Shabbat. Rules for how to sort toys to clean them up. Feeding meat and milk to kids. Can you wash breastmilk or formula bottles in a meat dishwasher? C’mon. How do you not see a million questions here?
Friend/FB: I never thought about that. It seemed obvious. / I just did what I had to do and didn’t ask questions I didn’t want answers to. / I just did what my mom or friends do.
Color me shocked. We analyze everything. Everything. Every detail of life. Why did I see so little discussion of halacha with kids? There are some books, mostly older. (I don’t recommend them – ask your posek/mom/friends. Way too many issues involved, and the books just give the most stringent answer based on assumptions that aren’t always articulated clearly.)
There’s a similar lack of books about parenting Jewishly, though there are more coming out all the time, mostly from the non-orthodox perspective, which I think is interesting. I have several Jewish parenting books I’m going to be reading over the next year or so, so look forward to more reviews! But let’s start with an excellent one: Raising a Child with Soul: How Time-Tested Jewish Wisdom Can Shape Your Child’s Character.
But what if you’re not Jewish? Is this still worth a read? Sure, why not? Given the nature of the parenting publishing world, I read a lot of parenting books explicitly written from a Christian perspective (heck, most of the Charlotte Mason community writes from this perspective). I’ve learned a great deal from them. You take what works and leave what doesn’t, and that’s true for every parenting book we encounter. Personally, I find it interesting to read parenting books that present cultures very different from my own, whether Christian, Dutch, or French. (Those are the groups I’ve read the most about.) Seeing common questions from a very different perspective of your own and with very different justifications or assumptions, you can analyze your own perspective and assumptions with a fresh eye.
I was so happy to discover this book at the library. I knew about the author’s mother, Rebbetzin Jungreis from the Hineni Center in Manhattan. When I was in my first year of law school and not actively affiliated with a community, I began watching Shalom TV since my roommates had cable (my first time with cable in 10 years at the time!). I was floored to find a Jewish channel on tv! Each Shabbat morning, I would watch a parsha shiur by Rebbetzin Jungreis on Shalom TV, and it was a major part of what pulled me back into shul and my conservative conversion (affectionately referred to as Conversion 1.0). When I learned that her daughter had written a book on parenting, I knew I wanted to read it. But at the time, I didn’t have any kids! Then of course I forgot about it.
I highly recommend this book. I like that this book gives Jewish sources and perspectives on the gentle parenting practices thankfully prominent today. But while still being authoritative and maintaining a clear distinction between parent and child, which I personally think is an important component of gentle parenting. There must be a foundation of respect of a parent, just because they’re the parent. While a child deserves respect as a born person, my home is still a benevolent dictatorship at the end of the day. She can’t understand every reason for the actions I take, and that’s ok and means I don’t always have to explain myself in the here and now. She’ll understand later. And while I’m happy to reconsider a situation based on new facts, I’m not trying to raise a lawyer who negotiates every decision. That’s not always a popular thing to say in the crunchy-ish groups I belong to, but my own life experience has shown that friend-based parenting isn’t a model I believe in.
And that’s also the model Charlotte Mason advocates. Both would argue that a child deserves a reason if they ask, but they also must be obedient regardless of whether they understand our reasoning or not. I believe both offered this excellent advice: if you tell your child to do something (and you shouldn’t overwield this power), and the child asks “why,” they can have an answer. But only after they’ve done what you asked. After they’ve obeyed quickly and cheerfully, they can come back to you for an answer and discussion. Funnily enough, they rarely come back because during the action, they magically remembered the reason you’ve explained to them 32 times before. It was usually just a stalling tactic. You’ve respected their request, respected their personhood by making reasonable requests in the first place, and also demanded the obedience that builds good character.
This book doesn’t explicitly say so (that I remember, but I remember hints at it), but Jewish parenting fulfills a key aspect of CM’s parenting advice: your child should understand that you too are bound by rules and must do the things you “ought” with quick and cheerful obedience just like they have to. Parents must obey Gd and the secular laws, just as a child must obey his parents. Few religious communities make that as clear to children as halachically-observant Jews. We have so many opportunities to model quick and cheerful obedience in our own behavior: “I’d really like a piece of cheesecake, but I just ate meat. I’ll have to wait three (or six or whatever) hours. Darn! Oh well. Wanna go read a book?”
The only downside of this book is that I didn’t connect well to the examples given. The author’s work is obviously primarily with very wealthy families. I’m not wealthy. It seemed that many of the parents were not orthodox like the author (and myself, though we are likely from very different orthodox communities), but I didn’t find that to be a barrier to connecting with the examples. Maybe that’s because I haven’t always been orthodox, but I think both orthodox and non-orthodox folks can connect with these examples.
On the other hand, I did have a hard time connecting to the example because I have different parenting practices than they do. I don’t (yet) have iPad and Disney World battles, and I hope that my parenting practices will nip most of those questions in the bud. For example, we’re not totally screen-free, but we’re close to it.
But I’d love to have summer home and international vacation problems. Hook me up!
Tl;Dr: Check it out, Raising a Child with Soul is definitely worth a read. Very practical and presents a different model of authoritative parenting than I’ve seen before, though many writers today tackle that fine line between permissive and authoritarian parenting. If you struggle with that line between being a crunchy parent and a traditional American parent, this one will speak to both sides of you and harmonize the best parts. If you lean toward one side or the other, you might benefit from a different viewpoint that’s still closer to the middle of the parenting spectrum.
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