Pregnancy Scare

Yesterday I walked in to my office to see that someone had brought a baby in to work with them. Not just anyone, but one of the high school interns. As the youngest paid member of the workforce and one of the very few parents, I should not be one to judge, but I couldn't help and take a second look. Sure enough, there was no baby- it was actually an incredibly life like doll. My curiosity was piqued; why was a high-school senior carrying around a doll in a real infant-seat? I couldn't think of any explanation that didn't involve a prank, so I gave it up and went about my own business.

Less than an hour later the doll began to cry. Really cry. A recording of an actual baby's cry projected from a speaker in the doll's insides! Next thing I know, the high-school girl was scrambling to soothe the doll. She first "changed" the diaper, but when that didn't help, she rocked the doll back and forth, finally getting the thing to stop whimpering only when she sat down and fed it a bottle. This feeding lasted a good 15 minutes, after which I heard a very audible burp. Finally the doll was wrapped up and put for an afternoon nap in the infant seat. I kid you not.

It turns out this high-school girl was fulfilling her senior Health Class requirement of caring for a 'baby' for 48 hours. The particular baby in question was in fact a robot, with a computer chip inside of it that is programmed to cry at certain intervals to signal that it needs sleep, food, a diaper change or just some attention in the form of rocking or walking. If the wrong need is met, the doll will continue crying. If the doll is not changed or fed for too long, it will get "sick". If the doll is beaten or shaken, it will "die" and the student will fail the course. Needless to say, the doll does not coo or smile or giggle; the only positive response it can show to good care is an hour or so of peace and quiet.

The stated purpose of this experiment is to prevent teen pregnancy by having teens experience firsthand the difficult reality of caring for a child. Apparently, somebody in health administration thinks that 48 hours with an infant is terrible enough to discourage anyone from being irresponsible when it comes to pregnancy. Aside from all the obvious work involved in keeping the doll satisfied, it's rigged with sensors and a recording device so the care-taking kid loses all sense of independence and privacy. The hysterical crying especially and continuous whimpering would make any real parent frustrated, let alone a high-schooler. There's no question that this doll was designed to be a torture device-- something that is unequivocally undesirable.

Obviously teen pregnancy is a problem that should be addressed in public high-schools, but I would think the discussion would be relevant to the younger set. I can't understand why these dolls were used on this particular group of students: mostly rich, white Upper East Side prep school over achievers, interning in their free time, who are in no way at risk for teen pregnancy! If I saw this exercise done on 15 year old urban kids, I'd see the point, even if I disagree with the tactic. But upper class seniors who are graduating in a few months and are almost through with adolescence? What total propaganda! This exercise was intended to implicitly teach the students that having children while young is a burden-- an all around tiresome, torturous mistake.

I'm the conspicuous young mother in my office, so I had to stand my ground. I quickly flipped through my online albums and printed out, in color for full effect, the cutest possible shot I could find of my daughter with her cousins, all kids who's parents are under 25. They're pictured huddled in a group hug, each one smiling cuter than the next. I showed the picture to the high school girl and in my most casual and unassuming tone I mentioned that "you would never guess, but having babies while young can be fun and very rewarding, despite the frustrations and dirty diapers, etc..." The conversation didn't go too well. All I sensed from her was overwhelming pity, no matter how hard I tried to convince her that I'm not delusional for thinking about young mothering in positive terms and no matter how much I insisted that my child was not an accident at 22.

After spending a few more hours in the same vicitinity as that baby, listening to the cries, the annoyingly looped sobbing and the insatiable gulping and burping, I began to buy in to the brainwashing. I started having evil thoughts involving the doll and a baseball bat (a la office space). Even those life-like elbow dimples and thigh curls, which I had previously thought amazing in their uncanny resemblance to the real thing, started looking freakish. Never have I seen a device so effective in eliciting a negative emotional response from everyone around it. And the device was not a dental drill-- it was a baby doll! To think that this is mandatory experience for high schoolers makes me sad. And to think that this exercise was intended to transmit "values"...

Update: Thanks to a link from orthomom on Jewess, you can check out this doll, called "Baby Think It Over" here and here.

Imamother.com

My friend directed me to the website ImaMother.com, and I'm so excited. It's the ultimate frum girly-talk site, and who can get enough of that! Think of it as a hashkafa.com for women-- brilliant! Here is a blurb from the 'about us' page so you can get a better idea of the purpose of this site:

Welcome to our website. I, Yael, together with my husband, developed Imamother.com because we felt that there was a need for a website geared to frum Jewish women and mothers.

This website was born after I went searching in the vast expanses of the internet for some advice about raising my kids. I looked at the Jewish forums of numerous parenting websites, but there just wasn’t anything relevant to me, as a frum, Lubavitch woman. Again I left my computer feeling like there was just a blank area where there should have been a place where I could share my thoughts and worries. I was looking for a place where I could meet more women just like me. I wanted a spot where my friends and I could go to share stories about our day. I wanted a website just like all the others but with a very important difference. I wanted it to be relevant to me as a married woman and as a frum mother. I wanted a place where there would be information about topics that are important to me. And where I could get advice from other frum mothers about whatever issue was bothering me at the moment.

I searched and searched for this website, and when I found none, I decided to meet that need myself. I felt frum mothers all across the world deserved a place to connect, chat, share advice about raising kids and dealing with our husbands, and talk about issues that are important to us. Since my husband knows how to develop websites and enjoys doing it, we agreed to start this website together. He would take care of the technical aspects and I would moderate Imamother.com. Since we started we have undergone many changes. We even had a name change. We accepted advice from friends and family. We added links and removed others when we saw people didn’t use them.

Slowly, slowly, with a lot of hard work, we made this website into what it is today. And we are still looking to improve our site. We want women to feel that there is a place online where we can connect and unite, give and receive advice from other frum Jewish mothers, and learn new things. I hope this website will unite all Jewish mothers across the world. Let us all be part of one online community.

The shame is that you can't just browse their forums to satisfy your inner voyeur. First they require all readers to sign up and register by filling out a questionnaire that includes questions such as, what are the side effects of having your period, what is the brocha for mikvah, and what shul are you affiliated with. The purpose of the questionnaire is to weed out any applicants that are not frum married women, though I'm sure most men could easily answer the exclusively female questions. But I dutifully filled out the form and now I await word back from their moderator who will let me know if I'm female enough and frum enough to join their site. Oh gosh, I hope I pass.

Why every mother should be stay-at-home...

One word: STRESS.

It's that simple. Women who raise children have enough built in stressors in their lives without the totally unnecessary addition of work-related stress. Men should worry about work and women should worry about kids. After all, "it's the way G-d intended." Adam was cursed to bear the burden of toiling the land, and Chava was cursed to bear the burden of childbirth. This distribution of punishment is really practical because these responsibilities are mutually exclusive*. Feminism be damned, I'm admitting out loud that it's impossible to juggle home and work. I can't do it any longer! I don't want to. The irony of it is that I don't have to work and I do it only because I supposedly want to be a productive and independent person. What a farce. How did I ever let myself be convinced of such a stupidity. It turns out that I just like to make myself miserable!

So I keep going back to work and I keep complaining about it and my family keep suffering and the laundry keeps getting ignored and yet I'm proud of what I do at work while I also hate every minute I spend at it... I guess that's the cycle of my life. Wait, did I hear someone say "paradigm shift"?

*unless you are a lion.

I have so many negative things on the tip of my tongue now, but I'm going to practice a little self control and wait until tomorrow to say them ;)

Here's a cute video (for those of us who love naked babies, and for those of us who need a little help staying positive), but it's not entirely honest. Everyone knows that the second a kid gets the tiniest bit hungry, dirty, ignored or tired, world peace as we know it is over! My daughter, who has a very funny habit of asking me what words mean, told me the other day, "Mommy, right SAD and TIRED are the same word?" I had to think about it before answering, because to her, sad and tired really do mean the same thing. To come to think of it, on a day like today, it does for me too...

From death to birth: the true story of my turtle.

Early shabbos morning I awoke to find that one of my two turtles appeared to have died. Anyone who has kept pet turtles will tell you that their languid, lazy reputation is mostly undeserved and that relative to the stereotypes, they are pretty active. My two turtles particularly like to climb on top of each other and peek out of their tank from the perch afforded by the other’s shell. In fact, that’s about the only thing I've recently see them do. But then, who am I to question a turtle’s perception of fun.

As I sat there tapping and prodding the tank, trying to elicit a reaction of any sort from the turtle, a million thoughts ran through my head. First I wondered how had I been such a neglectful pet-keeper to not have noticed how little the turtles had been eating recently. I berated myself for forgetting to add the recommended dechlorinating tablets to the tank, wondering if that's what killed it. Then I tried to plan the next step—getting rid of the animal. Where do city kids bury their deceased pets? In central park? In the subway station? And speaking of kids, how was I going to break the tragic news to the turtle’s rightful owner—my innocent little 3 year old girl?

The panic set in. It occurred to me how completely unequipped I am in dealing with heavy parenting issues, such as teaching a child about the end of life. Luckily though, my daughter’s preschool has done a wonderful job introducing the concepts of death and destruction. Between the parsha and the holidays, my kid has no lack of violence and death in her repertoire. If you were to casually leaf through her weekly coloring sheets, these are the pictures you’d see: (1) little boy Avraham bashing his father’s idols (who, in the cartoonish mess, look eerily similar to the humans in the story) with a baseball bat, (2) Eisav, looking like a beast, biting into his twin brother’s neck, (3) graphic images of the 10 plagues, including Egyptians choking on frogs, crying out in pain because of bloody boils, and being attacked by beasts, and (4) the violent death du jour—Greek soldiers tumbling off elephants with 8 foot long spears sticking through their bodies.

I wasn’t so sure this overexposure to death and violence made my job easier—would she buy into the story of a turtle who went to sleep and simply didn’t wake up, or would I have to make up a more gruesome scenario to suit her toddler fancy? In any event it was shabbos, so I’d deal with the situation later...

...later, the turtle was no longer dead. Over shabbos, it had walked across the tank and repositioned itself comfortably under the side of a large rock (possibly to avoid my annoying prodding). Al ha’nisim! I quickly googled “turtle care”, determined to find out what could be causing the turtle to behave this way. What I found proved to be even more dismal than death. My turtle is probably pregnant. Mating turtles eat poorly, spend a lot of time climbing on each other’s backs, after which the female hides herself until she lays the eggs. That explains everything!

The truth is, the last thing I need now is a half dozen more reptile hatchlings! But even worse is the inevitable question that follows… “Mommy, how are babies made?” Once again I am reminded of how completely unequipped I am in dealing with heavy parenting issues, such as teaching a child about the beginning of life. No thanks to the schools, who do a great job of steering very clear of this topic, my job will be much harder this time around.

I: Things you may not know about sheva nekiim and infertility

The topic of sheva nekiim is up for discussion, following an an orthodox obstetrician's suggestion to abolish the practice of counting 7 clean days before mikvah, since it is largely responsible for many cases of infertility and is founded on a chumra rather than halakha. I suspect that because the topic is treated with such modesty and privacy, there is a lot of confusion and ignorance. I would like to clarify a few things. [My opinion is based on experience as a married woman in the medical sciences. I cannot comment on the halakhic aspect of the issue.] But first, read the Haaretz article that sums up the original debate, and My Obiter Dicta’s review and excellent commentary (via Mentalblog).

First of all, missing ovulation because of niddah is more common than expected. So common , in fact, that most NY ob-gyns are familiar with niddah laws (as I imagine all physicians who treat orthodox women are) and refer to this particular situation as Orthodox Infertility. They say it laugh though, because technically this does not constitute medical infertility and is easily fixed for most couples. The typical medical treatment involves lengthening the women’s menstrual cycle via hormone therapy so that she ovulates later in the month, namely after mikvah.

There are many couples who elect not to see a physician but rather a Rabbi for their taharas hamishpacha issues. I am aware that Rabbanim deal with each question on an individual basis, but this common issue is usually treated by shortening the women’s period via herbal treatment, so that she can immerse in the mikvah before ovulation.

For most couples, one or the other treatments works. Very few couples remain unable to become pregnant because of bad timing alone. Treatments are relatively simple and mostly painless. I choose my words carefully because on one side there are people saying that hormone treatments are life threatening while the other party insists that they are no trouble at all. In this case, I feel both sides are being dishonest. Here is a more practical overview of treatment effects.

A typical rabbinic endorsed herbal cocktail includes high doses of herbs that are known to stop bleeding and cause uterine contractions, i.e. nettle, thistle, cohosh, roots of certain teas, etc… They may also recommend a Bioflavonoid to maintain small blood vessels in tissue lining (which may be the cause of excessive bleeding) and bathing in chamomile (I don’t know what this can do but it sounds relaxing).

Many people are under the misconception that because herbs are natural, they are completely safe. In fact, herbs are very potent and can have powerful effect on the body. (Many prescription medications are made from herbs or their derivatives.) In short, taking herbs for medical purposes without medical supervision seems to me like a dangerous practice. The same holds true for those ‘magic pills’ that kallah instructors give out so the bride’s will be guaranteed not to menstruate around the time of the wedding. These birth-control type pills are secretly imported because they are not FDA approved, and not surprisingly many brides have problems after taking these pills, such as sudden bleeding before the wedding or not menstruating for many months after the wedding. Also, because herbs are readily available, people who don’t know better will rely on unprofessional advice and possibly hurt themselves. I once heard a newlywed complaining about spotting during pregnancy; her also newlywed friend recommended several herbs that her Rav had given her to end her spotting. Anyone who takes unknown substances while pregnant is incredibly irresponsible and stupid. Case in point—one of these particular herbs had been used for generations by Native Americans to induce abortion! Had the pregnant woman taken the herb that “the Rav recommends for spotting”, she could have caused a spontaneous abortion (miscarriage). I am not suggesting in any way that Rabbanim are harming people by disseminating dangerous herbs, but the risks are apparent and people should use their heads.

The risks involved in hormone treatment, i.e. cancer or stroke, are much more frightening but are also much less likely (by a great magnitude) to occur. Oral estrogen is associated with certain female cancers, but so is chlorine bleach and possibly trans fat. The risks may be there, but they are not substantial or direct enough to render a short treatment plan unsafe. The immediate side effects that result from taking hormones include weight gain, nausea, possible migraines, trouble sleeping, mood swings etc. I would label these side effects relatively mild, compared with other infertility treatments that are far more invasive, expensive, and painful.

The problem of missing ovulation due to niddah is not entirely solved. While the medical cause can be easily repaired (to read research articles, type in "orthodox infertility" into search bar), there are many people who don’t know the cause of their infertility and for one reason or another do not seek medical or rabbinic help. The woman in the Haaretz article who thought she was infertile until her late 40’s, only to find out she had always been missing her ovulation, is cited as a victim of sheva nekiim. She should sooner be cited as a victim of her own ignorance and neglect! Why hadn’t she seen a doctor or discussed her condition with anyone who could direct her to help? Blaming the practice for her condition is unjustified, but claiming that the condition is independent of the practice is also untrue.

Orthodox Single is another way of saying Forever Infertile... and that's unfair.

I recently shared a shabbos lunch with three single women. They were around 50 years old. One was divorced with a teenage child; the other two had never been married. These women were accomplished professionals—funny, intelligent and all around good company. I wouldn’t presume to guess why they never married, but I caught myself wondering if they still considered themselves on the make. Did they still think that their life was incomplete without a spouse? Were they deeply unsatisfied or had they come to terms with living a single, but vibrant and meaningful life?

It then occurred to me that their marital status was really not the issue at all. What intrigued me was that two of these women never had their own children and most likely never will. Sometime during the meal we were discussing property taxes and estate planning and the topic of children who fight over their parents’ estate came up. One woman leaned over to the other and mumbled, “I’m lucky I’ll never have that problem.” She laughed at the irony, but I saw it as nothing less than tragic.

I suppose that by today’s progressive standard a woman can be complete without having experienced childbirth or motherhood, but I feel that would only hold true when considered in the context of choice. A woman who does not wish to be a mother is better off staying single and/or childless. But these women at my table, who are orthodox and theoretically family oriented, are forced into childlessness not by choice, but by circumstance.

Outside of the orthodox world, it’s becoming the norm for single women to be having children. Even in the most liberal crowd, there’s a stigma that goes with artificial insemination, but I think this last resort for a single woman running out of time is considered more or less reasonable. The Jewish Week ran an article some time ago about women who became pregnant without a partner and concluded that they are higher up on the ladder of acceptability than unmarried women who are naturally impregnated, by accident or not. Mind you, these considerations are not based on religious or halakhic standards. Now consider the orthodox woman who is in a totally different playing field, where the standards of acceptability are the most stringent. With so many who remain unmarried these days, so much so that the term ‘old maid’ has become quaint and irrelevant, their issues must be addressed. I don’t care to judge them or call them picky or too ambitious and career driven; the reality is that they are put in a terrible bind by virtue of their being orthodox.

So how do we treat single middle aged women: as lepers who should be punished for their inability to settle down, as unstable and incompetent people who can’t be trusted with parenting and should therefore not be allowed any viable alternative? Or how about treating them simply as infertile? Many women are infertile because of biological reasons; let these women be considered infertile based on sociological reasons.

Infertile couples have many options and untraditional ways to become parents, from adoption to in-vitro fertilization to surrogate pregnancy. Sperm donation is the most restrictive and complicated option, (if the child later marries a relative of the sperm donor, it would be incest/ if the donor is a cohen, his sons are cohanim and are restricted in who they may marry, etc…) but there have been ways to circumvent the problems, e.g. using non-anonymous donors. Despite the countless ethical and halakhic issues involved in each of these choices, the rabbanim have been making huge and commendable efforts to enable orthodox couples to use the latest technology and to adopt what’s available to halkaha (see infertility resources). The question is, who should qualify as infertile so that they can benefit from all these options.

Until now the window of opportunity has been tightly guarded by the powers that be, lest the argument be made that gays should also be given the opportunity to procreate using whatever means available. But while homosexuality is a halakhic issue, single motherhood is not. I’m not convinced that giving women who don't have the opportunity to have children in a traditional way a chance to do so outside of marriage would destroy the sanctity of the family.

As radical as my opinion sounds, I predict that should this become a reality, the first people to jump on it would be the frummest. Most older singles I know are modern orthodox. In many ways it’s easiest to be single in the modern world, because there’s more opportunity outside of family life for fulfillment (communal, professional, and in some circles even physical). But a highly observant single who passes a certain age without marrying is virtually doomed to remain lonely, separate and completely uninvolved in community life, because nobody can accommodate them. It’s the same reason infertile religious couples have such a hard time finding acceptance and support—because everyone married has children and there is simply no room for any deviation from that lifestyle. But why should being single be considered deviance?

I state my case especially for women, because a man never quite runs out of time (until he’s dead) or capacity for having children, whereas a woman has that ominous biological clock hanging over her head. This is very much my gut feeling and not an informed opinion—I know very little about the halakhic implications of fatherless conception—but even if it were unsolvable, the possibility of adoption remains. Everybody knows a frum single woman who would die to adopt children and raise them in the proper way, but doesn’t only because it’s just not done. Well, I don’t think ‘it’s just not done’ is a good enough reason to stop people from doing positive things that could be accommodated for in halakha.

It’s obvious that what used to work no longer does. Insisting on sanctimonious values and relative definitions of Jewish family hurts the growing number of people who don’t fall into traditional categories. (This isn’t even tradition so much as a recent and local definition because, for instance, before the cheirim d’Rabeinu Gershom one man could have been the father/husband to many families and his presence was unnecessary. When arranged within the bounds of halakha, a woman can raise her children alone and be recognized as a family unit.) If this puts me on the fringe, then so be it, but I feel that it’s only a matter of time before these supposedly scandalous alternatives will be uncovered as the reasonable and permissible options that I think they are.

Update on fines (knas) in yeshivos.

Update: My husband just pointed out to me that my post will make absolutely no sense to anyone that hasn't been through a lubavitch boy's yeshiva. It turns out that no other yeshivos fine their students for misbehaving! Well what do you know--we are crazy after all. In all seriousness though, is it true that only lubavitch schools use this system? If so, why in the world? How do other yeshivos punish their students and why don't lubavitch yeshivos do the same?

(Comment here.)

Who hates parents? Schools do!

Every society has a way of punishing those they dislike. The U.S. taxes the poor, Iran taxes infidels, and France taxes Americans. (Well, they should, anyway—what self respecting American would live in France?) The pattern is fairly logical—we don’t like you, you’re a drain on society and a general nuisance, so you get taxed. Why then are yeshivas taxing their students’ parents?

I’m not talking about the astronomical prices of yeshiva tuition, because that can be factored into the base cost of frum life with children. I’m talking about the practice of giving kids a knas (fine) for disobedeience. Let me give a little background. Much has been said about the yeshiva tuition crisis. The consensus is that with growing family size and increasing cost of tuition, middle class families are drowning. The yeshiva administration insists that rising tuition reflects rising cost of running the institution, while parents insist that they are being punished for being religious and having large families. In short, it’s clear that many families are unable to meet the cost and even if they do, it comes at the cost of something else. So the context is a very tight money situation where every penny exchanged between parent and school is done under large strain and difficulty.

Along comes a child who has a hard time getting to class on time or has ADD and can’t sit still in class. Maybe the kid is truly a problem and doesn’t follow any of the yeshiva rules. Every school has its tough cases. How do certain yeshivas handle these kids? They slap them with a fine! The yeshiva I’m thinking of in particular has a schedule of fees that looks something like this:
1 class lateness = $20
2 class lateness in one week = $50
Late to curfew = $100
etc…

Add to this chart that the fines are not fixed and can be doubled or tipled at the discretion of the teacher or administration member. So if you’re late to curfew because you were playing basketball in the yard *gasp*, expect a $200 fine, because playing ball makes the lateness much more egregious. It doesn’t take much to figure out that the entire cost of the fine gets passed on to these kids’ parents. It’s virtually impossible to expect a kid who’s in yeshiva from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. to have any time to make the money to pay off the fine. If the yeshiva intends to punish the student, then by all means, inconvenience them and make then do something unpleasant that would lead them to think twice about repeating their bad behavior (was the dishes, memorize mishnayos, term paper, lose privileges…). But give them a monetary fine and in most cases the young bochur can’t even appreciate that it’s a punishment. The worst part about getting the fine is having to face your parents when collecting the sum. That’s about as effective a punishment as having the parent sign a note that says s/he is aware of what their child did.

But wait, that isn’t all. The way I’ve seen this policy upheld is that the student is given a day or so to produce the money or they cannot return to class. Again, what kind of punishment is that? A trouble making kid is more than happy to goof around during school hours and the parent is forced to pay up pronto unless they want their kid out of school. Given how much sacrifice goes into paying for the kid’s basic attendance, I doubt most parents can whip up the amount of the fine every time the kid messes up. Which begs the question, why is the yeshiva punishing the parents? Does the school expect a kid to behave based on the guilt of costing their parents hard earned cash? Can anyone really expect a 16 year old to appreciate the value of money or how hard it is for his parents to put him where he is? Tuition is by all accounts one of the most burdensome and difficult costs of frum life. Is just isn’t fair that we jack it up with hidden charges and unnecessary fees only because the school can’t bother coming up with a meaningful and effective punishment.

Update: My husband just pointed out to me that my post will make absolutely no sense to anyone that hasn't been through a lubavitch boy's yeshiva. It turns out that no other yeshivos fine their students for misbehaving. Well what do you know--we are crazy after all. In all seriousness though, is it true that only lubavitch schools use this system? If so, why in the world? How do other yeshivos punish their students and why don't lubavitch yeshivos do the same?

Sex-Ed for frum kids

I don't usually recycle comments, but I think this one bears repeating. From RebReb's thread:

Where are all the parents who should be educating their children about the dangers of sexual predators? I blame all the same people you do, but at the same time, I also it's every parent's responsibility (not the schools' or community leaders') to make sure it never happens to their child-- so that if it does, the child knows how to respond.

It's time to let go of old notions of chilhood innocence, where we don't expose our kids to anything sex-related until it's applicable. First of all they find out by themselves much earlier than we'd like anyway through friends and pop culture, so may as well do it in an appropriate way, via parent-to-child talk. Second of all, it's worth "corrupting" a kid at a younger age with this unpleasant knowledge, if only to avoid the one in a million chance that the child will be Gd forbid exposed to abuse and not know what it is or that they should run and tell an adult.

Update: SephardiLady says it better.

Where Halakha and Morality collide

Consider the following:

Had Yehuda Kolko been seen playing with a 10 year old girl's hair, or had a 12 year old girl told school administration that Kolko had asked her to sit beside him and hold his hand--I have no doubt that he would be promptly dismissed from any respectable position. All physical contact, even a-sexual, between men and girls older than 9 is prohibited, so there's no doubt that this behavior would be considered scandalous and unfitting for a yeshiva rebbi. Yet Kolko was repeatedly accused of molesting young boys, and the charges were dismissed by both school administration and the halakhic authority involved. Only recently has Kolko been asked to take forced leave; but remember that the leave is paid and temporary, so he hasn't yet been categorically rejected.

Is it because technically speaking there is no issur in a man fondling a boy (like negiah)? I suppose that is why the issue of mesira keeps surfacing. Since a beis din only has the capacity to enforce halakhic matters, and same-sex molestation that does not include assault is only a criminal violation, it is therefore outside the domain of the beis din and must be handed over to the secular courts.

I wonder if this twisted logic has crossed people's minds--that a mere hashkafa matter is not grave enough to allow mesira. Forgive my making these terrible presumptions, but I'm desperately trying to come to terms with the possibility that upstanding people, good Jews, parents and teachers could possibly allow for such a crime to go not only unpunished but unstopped. Again I ask, where are the leaders? Why hasn't there been an asiefa or edict issued by big rabbanim stating in non-negotiable terms that the orthodox community has zero tolerance for both the behavior and any cover-up thereof? ZERO- TOLERANCE! The least we can do is demand answers, not excuses but answers, from those in charge.

un-Happy Mother's Day

In honor of this year's Mother's Day, I cried for two hour straight. I know that Mother's Day is supposed to be a celebration of motherhood and a day of appreciation for the sacrifice and dedication that goes into motherhood, bla bla bla... but instead of focusing on the positive, I spent the day rehashing all those fleeting year-long thoughts I have about motherhood, which include a lot of guilt, frustration, and fear of failing my family. I'm not talking about the day to day pressures of being a parent, such as discipline, accidents, or lack of sleep. I'm talking about the greater responsibility involved in being handed a life, a soul, a complete human being. When I think about the status of my motherhood, so to speak, I can't help but cry. Let me try to explain:

I spent the last several years in a demanding and highly competitive college. I have a part-time job that I do from home, which keeps me busy in addition to homework. I am also doing a year long internship, because my field requires experience, not just a degree. More importantly, I have a great marriage, a beautiful child, and many blessings in my life (baruch Hashem). You must be asking yourself why on earth I would have anything to complain about. The truth is I shouldn’t, but I can’t help but feel completely overwhelmed and saddened by it.

It would seem that my schedule and lifestyle would better suite a type-A workaholic who preferably has help. I, on the other hand, am disorganized and easily harried, I don’t have any help with housework or nanny-ing, I need too much to sleep to function normally, and I have a problem with procrastinating… In short, I am completely overwhelmed. I find myself always exhausted--too tired to keep in touch with friends, too tired to go out with my husband, too tired to fulfill any household duties beyond what absolutely cannot be overlooked. (So while I’ll make a healthy dinner every night, I might not wash the dishes until two days later. I sometimes don’t even notice how much needs to be done, until there isn’t a clean pair of socks to be found or the like.)

The worst is that since I’m out of the house for so many hours, I send my daughter to a full day day-care. I carefully chose an excellent program where I thought I could leave my daughter for many hours worry free, but I was wrong. Despite how warm and loving the teachers are, and even though my daughter is extremely happy (she asks to go to school on weekends) I still feel horrible that she is not with me for most of her waking hours during her young and most impressionable years. There’s no way to get around not spending enough time with your kids; quality time does not substitute for quantity of time together. My daughter certainly doesn’t act neglected--her behavior and development are wonderful--but I still know that what I’m doing is wrong. For those few afternoon hours that we do have together, I shut off the phone and do nothing responsible so I can focus on my daughter; but that does not make my friends and other family happy when they're trying to get in touch with me, nor does it make me happy when I'm supposed to be doing something important.

So what are my options? I can't be a stay at home mom because that would also be utterly irresponsible. I have one child who's old enough for a full day at school-- clearly not what's considered enough of a 'burden' to warrant not working. Also, staying home would just give me more time to remember that I only have one child, even though I so badly want more; so it's good that I stay very busy. I also couldn't possibly waste my expensive education by not using it--my parents would be devastated (and rightfully so) after having paid so much in tuition.

The other option is that I get my act together and make it work. There are women who have no problem working full time and raising several children, all while maintaining their sanity, so why can't I? I'm no basket-case and I've been functioning fine until now, so with enough work it should all start to fall into place. In fact, I should be proud of my achievements; my daughter is an adorable, well taken care of kid, I am graduating with a totally decent GPA, and I got a job offer in a prestigious institution. All in all, things have gone really well for me (bli ayin hora). But come Mother's Day and I'm still really sad, because what I want to be most, a full time mother up to her neck in kinderlach, I'm not. Instead I'm drowning in deadlines, papers, and projects that all pull me further away from home.

They say it’s human nature to want the very thing you don't have, but I'm ashamed to feel this way. It's a crime that I would even complain at all, considering the real problems other people have G-d forbid (i.e. no children at all, not being able to find a job, poor health, etc). To be clear, 364 days a year I feel busy but blessed, and mostly very happy. On Mother's Day though, I feel totally inadequate, and the fact that my problems aren't problems at all, but rather self-imposed stressors, doesn't make it better. I'm just glad that around here people don't actively celebrate Mother's Day, using the lame excuse that "every day is mother's day" even though I don't think I could handle having to evaluate and judge myself as a mother more than once a year.

So now you know why I waited a full day before posting my thoughts on Mother's Day. It wouldn't be right to everyone out there who deserves a happy and festive Mother's Day--especially my own mother who gave up a potentially fabulous career after having several children one after another. She did what she thought was right for her family and never looked back. I should learn from her example and be more open to whatever comes my way. I truly believe that Hashem only gives us what we could handle. Apparently my combination of work and kids is what's suited for me best--who am I to question or complain? In the end, I'm just happy Mother's Day is over so I can go back to being a busy and happy working mom who hasn't a free moment to self-obsess. Now it's time to carry on, so I wish everyone a lot of strength to do whatever it is that they have to do in this world and a lot of wisdom to be able to find joy and satisfaction in it.

Holy Foliage... there's a bug in my lettuce!

Bugs in lettuce are nothing new. One of the pillars of orthodox Jewish belief is that bugs are everywhere---in food, in water, in sheitels*. Since I was a little girl, I've spent hours of my life inspecting vegetables and sifting through grains to find those insidious little creatures. I don't ever buy raspberries, and I only buy triple washed frozen broccoli with a hechsher. I even bought a water filter when the copipods in tap water were a question. But just like I almost never find blood spots in raw eggs, bug sightings are rare and far in between, despite all my vigilance.

This weekend everything changed--I hit gold. It began this Friday night during my typical salad routine, which involves first rinsing the lettuce leaves, scrubbing the stems under water, and putting them aside to dry... then cutting all the veggies into the bowl-- tomatoes, cucumbers, radishes, peppers, avocados, you name it-- and finally holding each lettuce leaf up to the light and checking it on both sides for bugs. I'll often find a few unidentifiable black spots which I rub out with my fingers, but the leaf usually passes my scrutiny and gets cut or torn into the salad. End of story. But this week my efforts were finally rewarded. My two heads of lettuce were infested with microscopic black dots, many of which had legs. For a minute I considered trashing the whole bowl to avoid the unsavory job of nit picking the greens, but I was expecting a full table of hungry guests, so I had no choice but to persevere. It's then that I discovered that these tiny little things do not wash off under a normal stream of water--their legs are clawed into the flesh of the leaf. In other words, the only way to take off the bug would be to cut it out with the surrounding leaf--something which can't be done on shabbos. Luckily I had a few endives in the fridge, so I pulled a quick substitute. But the saga was not yet over.

Today my daughter decided to be extra difficult and refuse any offer of dinner that wasn't chocolate. She rejected everything and anything I put in front of her and insisted I give her chocolate, not for desert but for dinner. I bribed, I cajoled, and I finally gave in, because I couldn't send her to bed hungry. In my infinite wisdom as a mother, I set out to prepare a semi-healthy bowl of oat bran with a few chocolate sprinkles to make it attractive. I opened a brand new box of HO steel cut oat-bran only to find a box of HO steel cut oat-bran with bugs. What first looked like extra toasted pieces of grain were crawling, that's right crawling, around my daughter's polka-dotted cereal bowl. Again using my infinite wisdom as a mother, I jumped back and shouted "Oh crap! Bugs!" at the top of my lungs in front of my very alert, apt to repeat, sponge of a toddler. Oh great!

I bit my tongue and braved the pantry again, choosing a sealed box of snowy white farina (which I put through a sieve just to be sure). After preparing it, I sprinkled the obligatory chocolate sprinkles on top so that my daughter would consider eating it. When I finally sat her down in front of what would be any kid's ideal dinner, she took one look at the brown sprinkles floating in her farina and hollered, "Oh Crap! Bugs!"

Megilla reading for dummies... oops, I meant mommies

Yesterday my daughter came home from school with an arts-n-craft that would make any normal parent proud… leave it to me to cringe at the site of a gragger. It was the noisiest contraption I’d ever heard; taking it out of the knapsack alone sent out a good 80 decibels of unbearable noise into my otherwise peaceful apartment. The engineering was straightforward—two (heavily decorated) paper cups fastened together and filled with noisy junk. I finally found where my school money goes—they don’t fill these cups with popcorn kernels or rice; I’m proud to say that my daughter’s school fills her gragger with quality material--the biggest dried lima beans you ever saw and, I bet steel marbles as well. What were they thinking, the noisier the better? Being the patient mother that I am, I immediately hid this monstrous contraption away until Purim. I thought, “I won’t have to hear it until Megilla reading when I take it out in its right time.” It then dawned on me that I’d have to install a silencer on the gragger before letting my daughter walk into shul lest I wish to be stoned by my fellow congregants with those very lima beans.

So that’s how the dilemma began. Consider the following:

1. Women are halakhicly required to hear the Megilla twice on Purim (with equal stringency as men).
2. Women are traditionally the ones toting the little (read: noisy) ones along to the Megilla reading.

These two conditions are mutually exclusive and virtually impossible to fulfill at the same time. Anyone who has sat through a Megilla reading in a non-yeker shul (how do they do it, btw?) knows that of the usual 95% of the service that makes it over the mechitza, another 15% of the words are skimmed right off the top during Megilla reading (comstumes rustling, graggers graggling (?), babies crying, mother’s pleading for some silence, etc…) Clearly, not a good combination.

In Israel they deal with this situation brilliantly. The megilla is simply read twice so the kids can be shifted between parties. Why American’s don’t adopt this practice stumps me. Maybe some feminist groups protested saying that this equates motherhood with womanhood and further assumes the caretaking role to the female, etc… I think this is as fair a deal as it gets, as in, 'I go deaf for 45 minutes, okay, now your turn'. But somehow it hasn't caught on in orthodox circles. I have gone to private home readings in the past but I still ended up toting along the blasted gragger, accompanied by its eager owner. How could anyone expect me—with my kid who's highly prone to noisy debacles and my embarrassingly short attention span—to be able to hear the entire Megilla intact?

Now, what if women could read their own Megilla? Imagine we could claim the same immunity to noisy accessories or interuption as our male counterparts, i.e. “can’t you see I’m part of a minyan here, isn’t it a little sacrilege to ask me to---insert child-related activity here--?” I’ve often heard, in hushed tones though, that in certain instances woman are fully allowed—even encouraged—to make a minyan and lead their own services. Mikras Megilla, it turns out, may be one of them. [Full disclosure: my pseudonym is Am Haaretz for good reason, so bear with my very imprecise overview of the halakha.]

What are the issues and what’s holding us back?

There are two aspects of reading Megilla: (1) pirsum hanes, publicizing the miracle, which is satisfied by hearing the Megilla read aloud, and (2) mechiyas amalek, wiping out amalek (Haman’s) name, which is satisfied through reading aloud. Women are clearly obligated in the first because they took part in the miracle, but they don’t have any obligation to erase Amalek. In addition, Megilla takes the place of reading Hallel on Purim and women, unlike men, are not obligated in reading Hallel. For one person to include another person in a mitzvah, they must share equal obligations; in this case, the woman cannot satisfy mechiyas Amalek or Hallel for a man and therefore cannot read Megilla for him. (Sources: bahag & machreshes). This still does not explain why women can’t read Megilla for themselves or each other.

I did some quick, superficial research, and unbelievably I found that most rabanim consider ten women a proper minyan for reading the Megilla and even blessing harav eth riveinu! (I didn't even know you need a minyan for Megilla.) There appears to be no specific halakhic problem with women reading Megilla amongst other women. (Please don’t generalize and/or extend these opinions to women’s prayer groups, because the issues there are completely different.) If you follow this link and scroll down to "Women Reading Megillah", you'll see quotes of many interesting people's opinions, most of which seem to support the notion. Even this dissenting opinion of R'A. Soloveitchik is unconvincing, as no actual prohibition is cited:

“…in those communities, such as in Israel, where there is already an established custom to have a second Megillah reading for women, it is irrelevant whether the reader is male or female. Elsewhere, where such a minhag is not so common, a special women's Megillah reading should not be permitted (for hashkafic and public policy reasons).”

So I ask you, is public policy more binding than a more meaningful, halakhicly proper, fulfillment of a mitzvah? Might it be time for a hashkafa shift to better acommodate a mother's needs? Or is it wishful thinkingon my part to expect a better Megilla reading/listening experience if women were in charge?