Betzelem Elokim – Page 2 – A Jewish Journey Through Charlotte Mason Mother Culture

Book Review: On Mother’s Lap by Ann Herbert Scott

Disclosure: Some of the links below may be affiliate links. This means that, at no additional cost to you, I will earn a small commission if you click through and make a purchase. How else will I afford my used book addiction? You can read my full disclosure statement here.

I’ll cut right to the chase: I love On Mother’s Lap. Highly recommend.

It’s a sweet and simple story about a preschooler named Michael who wants to rock in his mother’s lap with all his toys but doesn’t want to share it with his baby sister. Bonus points for being drawn from everyday Inuit life without fetishizing it, with the drawings informed by the illustrator’s experience living in an Inuit village for a short time. (Eskimo is written in the book jacket but is often considered a derogatory term today.)

The moral: “You know, it’s a funny thing, but there’s always room on Mother’s lap.”

If you have more than one child, you need On Mother’s Lap in your life.

Book Review: Raising White Kids by Jennifer Harvey

Some light reading, right? First White Fragility, now Raising White Kids: Bringing Up Children in a Racially Unjust America by Jennifer Harvey.

This book is a must-read. It is a challenging but very necessary read.

I can’t help but compare this book to Simplicity Parenting by Kim John Payne. That is also a very good read I’d like to re-read again and will probably review it here.

I’d already thought about and bought into his ideas about minimizing our stuff and schedules. So the biggest take-away I took from Simplicity Parenting about a year ago was his suggestion to simplify kids’ exposure to news and other “adult” conversations. It really struck a cord with me because we were screen-free at that time except for us adults watching news over dinner. Oh yes, we break all the Good Parenting Rules and watch TV at dinner. Granted, we pause to debate frequently.

What he said resonated with me, and I knew that our nightly news would have to go sooner or later. It’s not appropriate for little ears. Spoiler alert: it probably should already be gone and isn’t.

This book threw a wrench into what I thought I knew from Simplicity Parenting.

I can’t protect my children from the world forever. Yet I can protect them from a lot of the world if I listen to Simplicity Parenting, but only because of white privilege. As I described in my review of White Fragility, I can avoid dealing with racism because I feel anxious, yet people of color with anxiety get no such reprieve. That has been the driving force for me since. This book had a similar effect on me:

Meanwhile, the reality of racial injustice raises genuinely difficult questions about what and how much to say: when to leave the radio on and when to turn it off. As one parent put it to me, “I don’t want to lie to my kids about US history and our society. But how do I talk about histories of violence – for example, what slavery or treatment of Native Americans was like? I don’t even let my eight-year-old watch violent television shows.”

How much and in what detail are, in many ways, personal parental questions that have to do with many things, including the temperment of our particular children. At the same time, just as I felt myself viscerally react to the mom who said to me, “I’m just glad she doesn’t have to worry about any of it,” I felt in the painful experience with my daughter the visceral knowledge that having chosen to allow her some heartbreak was, in fact, life-giving, humanizing, and necessary,

It’s deeply necessary we let our children’s hearts get broken a bit if they are going to remain able to recognize the humanity of their fellow humans whose lives are at stake in the system we live in. It’s necessary if they are going to grow any rooted sense of themselves as part of a larger, multiracial community of people to whom they are committed, and with and for whom they must speak out and act.

What I’m describing here goes well beyond tactical questions about teaching kids how to engage in activism. It goes beyond saying, “Well, if Black kids have to learn about police violence then so should white kids – otherwise we are just embracing white privilege.” This is certainly true, of course. But it’s a rather surface assessment of the stakes.

What I’m getting at is creating space for our kids to move into their deeply embodied relationships with injustice, as risky as that may feel. We need to create space for them to literally feel injustice and feel, touch, and ache from its real costs.
What I relearned in this painful experience with my daughters was that the entire enterprise of raising white kids for racial justice requires a difficult, vulnerable recognition: in a world where human beings are suffering from human-caused injustice and violence, the humanity of even the youngest of our children is directly tied to their ability to identify with that suffering. And our children also need to explicitly come to understand that same truth.
It’s understandable we want to protect our kids. But if we confuse finding age-appropriate ways to tell the truth about racial harm with overly insulating them, if we are too cautious because we are afraid it’s just too much, if we don’t want to cause them suffering, we withhold the very things they need to participate in deeper and more truthful ways of living. Indeed, we withhold the very things they most need to retain their humanity.
Raising White Kids, p257-258

No pressure, right?

As hard as the work will be, I’m thankful to be able to start with my kids so young. I wish I could start when I was a toddler, but now is better than tomorrow. And I’m lucky to live in a much less segregated place than the one where I grew up. As powerful as White Fragility is, this book was far more practical, though I still wanted more.

The two take-aways I had from this book:

Talk about race. Stop being silent. Discuss skin colors as you would discuss hair colors or professions. Babies pay attention to skin color from before the time they can talk. And little kids also quickly realize that they’re not “supposed” to point out skin colors or race, being shushed as soon as it’s mentioned. (See the race chapter in Nurture Shock for studies.)
Desegregate your life. This is a much harder project. I had chosen not to see how segregated my life has always been, despite my liberal values. This is a work in progress, but I’ve started with the two easiest parts: reading and media. Of course, I’m also continuing my way through the [free!!!] Me and White Supremacy Workbook. I’m trying to find other ways to desegregate my life, and some are in the works already, but this will be a lifetime project. Just like dismantling the white supremacy subconscious within me.

Reading: about racism and the parts of history that is still relegated to “electives” in schools as well as understanding other people’s experiences and how they differ from mine as a white person. I have a lot of catching up to do. I haven’t written about this yet, but I’m (again) doing a self-created Mother’s Education Course à la Charlotte Mason and the PNEU. One of the reading categories I included is social justice and another is biographies, focusing on people notable in the fight for social justice. (I’ve read few biographies, but I’ve twice read The Autobiography of Malcolm X and highly recommend it. I’m not sure when or why I originally picked it up, but I think of his story often.) I have never learned about most of American history. Really, have you considered how much history is missing from our educations?? And there’s a lot to learn now too about the ramifications of structural racism. There’s so much I have never seen because I was trained to not see it. It’s time to see the world from a fuller, more truthful perspective. Here are the books I’ve checked out from the library right now:

Media: I have never felt like I’m “allowed” to watch or listen to “ethnic” media. Except In Living Color. I watched the heck out of that, at a much younger age than was appropriate. I think I was just too young to catch The Cosby Show, though I watched Steve Urkel and the Mowry twins. But as an adult? I cut out most media when I dropped TV at 19 because it was expensive. My media intake became much more segregated. An echo chamber of the worst kind. I started by seeking out new podcasts, then branched out into some new TV. No, I don’t understand all the references, and that’s important. In the rest of my life, people cater to my culture and my perspective. Becoming Jewish exposed me to codeswitching and being that outsider perspective, and now I’m going through that process again from yet another perspective. It’s keeping me humble, that’s for sure.

Read Raising White Kids. You won’t regret it. And if you’re a Christian, also check out her book Dear White Christians: For Those Still Longing for Racial Reconciliation. (I might read that too eventually just because.)

Book Review: Busy Bags Kids Will Love by Sara McClure

Me: I’m not a crafty mom.

Also me: OMG MY KID IS ABOUT TO TURN 3 AND IS DRIVING ME INSANE AND THEN THIS HAPPENED

When I say I’m not crafty, I mean exactly that. Only about six weeks ago did I finally introduce my toddler to playdough. I am mess- and craft-averse.

Yet somehow I ended up in Michaels this morning buying this bunch of supplies (supplemented by some things I already had) and making a bunch of busy bags.

I guess I’m sort of officially a working mother now, besides the writing that gets done haphazardly. I work a few hours out of the home each week part of the year, so nothing too much. But I still have to find ways to keep my toddler busy without involving Daniel Tiger any more than I need to. (I used to be pretty much screen-free but now low-screen for the toddler only, and only Daniel Tiger. Because of ADHD, I try to be more limited with screens than I might otherwise have been.) The kids have a babysitter about half of the time, and the other half they come with me. Enter…busy bags.

I had heard of busy bags before but like I said, I’m craft-averse. Then I got this job and also heard the Homeschool Solutions podcast episode with Sara McClure: What to Do with Toddlers While Homeschooling.

Somehow I ended up purchasing this book.

It was a good call.

I’ve made 8 bags so far and have supplies for many more, plus duplicates since so many of the packages have more supplies than I need. I’m still deciding what to do with the duplicate possibilities.

My precioooooous.

I put these 8 bags together, from opening packages to putting them in my purse in under 2 hours. While eating lunch and watching Atlanta (it’s a very good show if you have access to Hulu or FX!). And three involved PAINTING or glue!!

Sure, not every project resonated with me, but most felt do-able. She’s not ready for some of them, but I know they’ll be a good idea.

This afternoon, I taught the toddler how to “sew” with a shoelace. She also learned (tried to learn) to open a clothespin. I’m also ready to teach her how to scissors, which I’ve been avoiding for a long time. It doesn’t feel so intimidating anymore.

I highly recommend Busy Bags Kids Will Love!

Book Review: Laying Down the Rails for Yourself by Sonya Shafer

Habit training our children is a foundational principle of Charlotte Mason.

In her very Twenty Principles she lays it out:

“…we are limited to three educational instruments – the atmosphere of environment, the disciple of habit, and the presentation of living ideas.”
…By EDUCATION IS A DISCIPLINE, is meant the discipline of habits formed definitely and thoughtfully, whether habits of mind or body.”
(Vol. 1, Preface)

And what does that attention to habit get you? No less than…

“The mother who takes pains to endow her children with good habits secures for herself smooth and easy days.”
Vol. 1, p136

Smooth and easy days sure sounds nice. Mason says the top 3 habits for a child are obedience, attention, and truthfulness. How are you on all those habits? Great? Oh yeah, me too. Totally.

The author of Laying Down the Rails for Yourself, Sonya Shafer, is also the creator/author of some of the most popular Charlotte Mason curriculums at the site Simply Charlotte Mason (Christian curriculums). She also has many free ebooks you can download, plus a blog and a podcast that is an audio version of the blog posts. Here, she’s written a small book on how to apply Mason’s habit training methods to yourself.

Laying Down the Rails for Yourself by Sonya Shafer

Shafer advocates on her blog that the top 3 habits for a homeschooling mom are orderliness, adhering to a regular routine, and the habit of a sweet, even temper. What, you didn’t know your temper was a habit? Now you know. That was a hard pill to swallow when I first heard this post on the podcast, but the more I think about it, the more I agree with her. If only agreeing were enough to make it suddenly appear in my life!

So how does one cultivate these habits…or any other? Especially with the new secular year approaching, a lot of us are reviewing our lives and habits, seeing how we can make the next year better than this one. Habits are the best place to focus, but it’s hard to reconcile all the different habit advice on the market (and the web). Believe me, I’ve read a lot of them.

What I like about this book is that it takes all the different analogies and “word pictures” that Mason uses to describe habits and breaks them down. Train tracks, well-trained riding horses, good investments, etc. Further, it follows Shafer as she changes her own health habits, applying each chapter to her story.

I found it encouraging and a different perspective than I’m used to in habit books, plus the bonus of further geeking out on CM. It also has a handy list of the habits Mason herself wrote about in her volumes in the back of the book. I read this over Shabbat, so I couldn’t take notes, but from what I recall, this was a secular resource, though her reasons for her habit change were religious.

Highly recommend.

Further reading: The other perspective-shifting habit book I’ve read was Gretchen Rubin’s Better than Before. However, if you struggle(d) with disordered eating, I do not recommend this book because I think it advocates a very disordered approach to eating as a “health” practice.

The other (obvious) further reading is the original Laying Down the Rails by Sonya Shafer, which is a lightly annotated and organized collection of all Ms. Mason’s quotes about habits in her Volumes. I was skeptical about buying a book full of quotes in books I already owned, but it’s organized neatly by topic, which makes it a great reference. It can also be read straight through, but it’s not the most engaging for a straight read, given the nature of the resource. I’m still reading it straight anyway, of course. Because that’s how I roll.

What’s your favorite habit resource? And what habits are you working on? Personally, I’m in the middle of trying to establish a regular routine.

How I Organize for Years From Now

Obviously, I’m not “officially” homeschooling yet. But I’m already collecting information that I may not use for years, just by attending meetings or conferences or stumbling on it online.

I have a couple of methods for organizing this information that I may not need for years.

1) For physical papers, I have an actual filing box with hanging folders. I had one laying around my house, left over from when I was caring for my mother. My own filing cabinet (I have a two drawer one) couldn’t hold her things, and I needed to be able to bring it back and forth to TN. This box served that purpose well. Then after she died, I was afraid to throw anything away because what if the IRS decided to audit her or something?? So it sat for a few years. I finally emptied it out (it had been about 5 years), and I made some new files. Here it is today:

Primarily, I set it up to hold my artist study prints. I wanted to start doing artist study myself (and the kids can see it too, obviously, but it’s for me at this age). I printed out a sample of artists I thought would be more little kid-friendly, nothing too abstract. I sent them to Staples through their website and printed on cardstock. They mailed it right to my door. Introvert with two 2-and-under win! The star on a file folder means the artist set is complete, at least 6 pictures. A few are incomplete and that seemed like the easiest way to differentiate. Keep it simple, right? I also have notes from the CM conference I went to, plus various Jewish educational materials I inherited from other Jewish teachers while building my library. One folder per general topic, throw it in, and I’ll go back when I need something!

2) There’s also a file folder on my laptop. There’s not a whole lot there, mostly just curriculum samples I’ve come across and a few things I’ve bought from A Delectable Education and the digital collection of the artist studies I found for free.

3) Lastly is Evernote. That’s mostly pictures from books I read. I take the picture, write the name of the book and author, and title the note. That’s it.

4) I think there may be a few things in Google Drive, but only because I’ve saved a Google document someone else shared with me. I’ve started a few planning documents in there, but they never went anywhere, since you know, I’m not actually planning a school year yet. But boy did I try a few times when I was feeling antsy!

An Amazing Book: White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo

Normally, almost all my books come from the public library. That’s how I stumbled upon this book. But it was so good that I bought a copy for myself, and I’m recommending it left and right!

Really. If you’re a white person (like me), you should read White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo.

It is important. So important. This has been one of the most important reads of my life. While it’s about racism, I found the ideas helpful to understand all conversations about bigotry, whether discussing transphobia or people responding to me pointing out antisemitism against me.

Being perfectly honest, I checked this book out because I wanted to understand “other” white people. Because clearly I’m “one of the good ones,” someone who has been trying to learn about racism and be a good ally for years.

Oh ho, this book was all about me. Yes, it also helped me understand my interactions with other people (especially now that I’m less likely to stay silent), but there was so much going on inside myself that I never recognized. Why I was silent most of the times when close friends said explicitly racist things, why I didn’t challenge hard-to-explain-to-the-unconverted racist statements and actions, why my heart literally races at top speed when I read these books about racism. My anxiety is literally triggered by these conversations.

The biggest take-away that I remind myself very frequently now: no matter how uncomfortable taking about racism is or what it costs me in friendships, that will never be as big a cost as racism costs to people of color. Prioritizing my comfort is being complicit, and it is a mark of privilege for me to say “this makes me anxious, so I won’t do it.” An anxious person of color gets no such reprieve.

Obviously, I’m not perfect. I have a ton of work to do. But I’m doing it, and it gets easier the more I speak to others, as I figure out how to put these very complicated concepts into words. I’ve lost a few friends, some my choice and some theirs. I don’t need people in my life who say such horrible things and dehumanize people of color, especially when they have reacted so poorly when the problematic nature of their statement is pointed out (as kindly as I can, but really, does dehumanization require kindness?). Those are not middos (character traits) I want to cultivate in myself, and you are often the sum of the people you spend the most time with.

As Jews, we exist in a liminal state between whiteness and Other. Most American Jews are white, whether or not they want to admit it. We benefit from white privilege all the time, while we also struggle with antisemitism all the time. One foot in, one foot out. I particularly see this myself as someone who wears a headscarf for religious reasons. Here in NY, people know that’s a Jewish thing but I also fear Islamaphobia, especially when I visit my family back down South where orthodox Jews are uncommon.

We’re not the only people balancing on that razor’s edge, but we’re a very large group who are. Jewish tradition speaks strongly of social justice, and the Torah itself tells us at least 36 times (there’s debate whether there’s more) to care for the “stranger” because we were strangers too. A few thousand years and that hasn’t really changed. I’m disturbed by the anti-stranger sentiment within the Orthodox community, and I think it’s absolutely against the Torah. Anti-racism work is religious work for me, what I’ve been commanded to do. I just didn’t see the full extend of the work before because I had been blinded by the White Supremacy soup I’ve been surrounded by since birth. Personally, I know I’ve been surrounded a bit more by that soup than the others in my Jewish community because I converted as an adult. Perhaps I experience antisemitism and Otherness differently than they do because I grew up without personal exposure to bigotry. I chose to join a group who faces bigotry, which is not a choice many white people make (not saying they should, it’s ok to be a white Christian). I had a taste of it growing up in an atheist family in the Bible Belt, but it’s nothing like having armed guards in my house of worship. Granted, I used to fear my children’s school one day being shot up (as Jewish institutions have been), but now it seems all schools face that issue 🤷

Given that it’s such an important book, I’m happy to report it’s pretty affordable as new books go, under $11 as of when I bought it and today (a month later).

Further reading: To continue the work started in this book, I highly recommend the free workbook Me and White Supremacy by Layla Saad. It’s set up as a 28 day journaling process, but you can do it in a shorter or longer time frame if that works better for you. I have found it incredibly useful.

Right now, I’m also reading Raising White Kids: Bringing Up Children in a Racially Unjust America by Jennifer Harvey. It’s excellent.

I’m continuing my anti-racist education, continuing to work through the workbook, planning to join an anti-racism course that’ll be offered in the spring, and working my own way through the Black Lives Matter syllabus. I’m doing a Charlotte Mason #MotherCulture challenge this year, and like last year, have mapped out a reading list for myself for 2019, with different books in different categories. I added anti-racism work as a category for this year to teach myself parts of American history I was not taught and more about the experiences of other marginalized groups in America, particularly the black community. I also added a memoir category, and about half of the books I’ve mapped out (what actually happens may be pretty different, as 2018 was) are activists or other change-makers.

What are you doing to challenge yourself to be a good ally to groups different from your own?

I Finally Censored a Book

We all get the urge to censor books. At least I think so 😉

We’re reading a good book, and then…ughhhhhhhhhh something makes you groan.

Why is that there? Why on earth did that seem like a good idea? Why did authors have to be so racist/fatphobic/horriblehumanbeings/whatever?

It’s often not so easy to censor a book. So usually, if it bothers me, it goes into the rehoming pile. I certainly have enough books left, and there’s no mandatory book list my toddler will be required to read by 18. (I know it feels like there is, but there isn’t. I promise. I’m a perfectly well-adjusted adult who has never read the Little House series, though I do plan to read it. Whether I read it to my kids remains to be seen after I’ve read it myself. I know all this is practically heresy in the homeschooling world.)

But I like Harold’s Circus by Crockett Johnson. And my toddler loves it too. It’s why she insists on pretending to fly on the flying rings every half hour, holding something in the air over her head, demanding that I get her down from the high rings. Groooooan.

But there’s a particularly offense page about the “fat lady” of the circus.

No thank you. But Gd had mercy, and the offending two pages are the same page. It can be removed without changing the story. We just didn’t read it for months, but she’s wising up to our method. Drastic measures had to be taken. Remove the content or remove the book.

I have a few other beefs with the book, but they’re pretty picky. I’ll keep the book until they bother me enough.

So I tore the page out. Believe me, it hurt me more than it hurt the book. Tearing a page out of a book?? Heavens to Betsy. Sacrilege! It tore out cleanly, thank Gd, yet I still hesitated to throw it in the recycling bin. Once I threw it away, it’d be real. No backsies. No taping or gluing it back in. But I knew I’d never put it back in the book.

Get out of my house. Good riddance.

Book Review: If All the Seas Were Ink by Ilana Kurshan

This book is the ultimate in Jewish #MotherCulture. It is meta Mother Culture, an inspirational and fascinating story of the process of Mother Culture within one Jewish woman in Jewish texts.

This is the story of Kurshan learning Daf Yomi over the course of about seven and a half years. YEARS. That’s dedication, even before you add in the three children she had in that time.

Kurshan wasn’t a mother when she began her Talmud journey. In fact, her journey was precipitated by her divorce from her first husband. Things were hard, and this helped her through and through all the hard times that came after that.

“Mother Culture” is not a process just for mothers. The way I see it, it’s just more important to encourage in mothers because mothers are the first people to stop their self-education because they’re so busy educating little people. And because the society around us tells us that we should sacrifice ourselves at every turn. If we’re doing something for ourselves, for our own benefit, society says that is selfish and harms our children. Mothers are an at-risk group, in a sense. It is so easy, and so culturally encouraged, to lose ourselves. And so we let ourselves atrophy.

And what could be more “selfish” than something that takes a significant amount of time, daily, for more than seven years?? How many women do you know who are comfortable committing to a daily practice for seven years? I know I don’t feel like I could because what will my life be like then?, I barely have the time now, sure the afternoon is free now but will it be in three months, I could make it work for a little while but what about when the rest of my family when the newness wears off… I could write excuses all day long to not sign up for a seven year program! But really, it’s not for seven years. It’s for today. Maybe tomorrow. Take one day at a time.

We adults, even us mothers, are “born persons,” as Mason would say. Our education, our enjoyment, our growth matters. Simply because we are people separate from our partners and children. Some in our culture try to make a “loophole” for mothers to do such “selfish” things for ourselves like sleep, exercise, and read books, but it’s such a backhanded permission: “your growth benefits your children directly” or “you can take care of yourself so that you’re less snappy at your family.” It’s still always couched in terms of other people’s needs, not ours.

Well guess what. Your needs matter, and your needs are rarely at odds with your family’s. Your needs are just as important as your children’s, and all of you deserve (and have the responsibility to) continue growing and challenging yourself every day. I’m writing this just as much for myself as for any of you. I need to hear it too.

If starting Daf Yomi is something that interests you, you don’t even need to understand Hebrew or Aramaic to learn something. For about a month (sadly only a month), I listened to a really nice podcast that summarizes the day’s Daf Yomi in 5-6 minutes: 5 Minute Daf with Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld. I still check in from time to time, and this is where I’ll start if I come back to this practice. But don’t worry, I have plenty of other practices keeping me busy right now!

So what are you doing for you?

Book Review: Exploring the Other Island: A Seasonal Guide to Nature on Long Island by John Turner

What a great find that I can’t believe I didn’t find before! My local chapter of the Sierra Club has a newsletter, and one month, there was a book review for this book, Exploring the Other Island: A Seasonal Guide to Nature on Long Island by John Turner. I was sold on trying it as soon as I saw the title!

A seasonal nature guide, tailored to my immediate location? How much better could it get?? Sometimes taking on a Charlotte Mason-style approach to nature is completely overwhelming for a newbie like me, but having a book like this can make it so easy.

Taking the advice in the book is a different question. So many good intentions, so few followed-through this summer. Buuuuuuuut. I did more than I have ever done before. I noticed more because I knew more to look for. And we did try a couple of things. It also built some of that foundational knowledge that it’s going to take me years to actually build into a large nature knowledge. Little by little wins the race.

Each chapter focused on a different animal or plant or phenomenon that was relevant to a particular season. This topical-within-the-season approach was very approachable and more interesting than a more scattershot “these are tidbits about everything you might find in this season” approach would be. I came away from each chapter feeling like I’d had a Charlotte Mason-style object lesson. Further, it gave me an overview of the geography of Long Island, the different ecosystems available, and some of the strengths of various parks and nature preserves. Most people wouldn’t guess it, but Long Island is chock full of nature. I find it overwhelming. Over 60 state parks, from what I remember, so where should I even start?! A book like this helps narrow the list.

This is a book I plan to revisit multiple times. In fact, I think I’ll place it on hold at the library right now so I can make some goals for this winter, especially since I already feel overwhelmed by winter and “what can we do??” Knowing me, I’m eventually going to buy this book.

Is there a book like this tailored to your immediate region within your state? If so, does your library carry it? If not, you can ask them to! My library keeps an anonymous suggestion box right beside the reference desk. Make good use of the suggestion box! I suspect few people do, so anyone who makes the effort is already far more likely to get what they ask for!

I Feel Personally Attacked by This Relatable Content

#TrueStory