A guest post on Food Processors and Pesach is up at Orthonomics.

Recent editions of Haveil Havalim can be found at Ima on the Bima and Yachdus.

For some reason, preparing for Pesach inspires me to write. Below, I present the best Passover posts below from years past on A Mother in Israel.

Passover 5767/2007:

The Pesach Problem. I should have called this one, “Why Only a Man Would Write that It’s Possible to Make Pesach in Four Hours.”

Unofficial Guide to Pesach Shopping in Israel

Pesach Menus

What is Gebrokt?

29th Kosher Cooking Carnival (Passover recipes)

Passover 5768/2008:

“Turning Over” the Kitchen

Preschool Passover Project: Simplified Haggadah

Pesach Crisis Cleaning

Keeping Kids Interested in the Seder

Passover 5769/2009:

Why “Average” Haredi Families Go to Hotels for Pesach Part II

The Indispensable Post-Pesach List

Pesach and Wasting Food

Post-Pesach Tips

Passover 5770/2010:

Four Pre-Passover Questions

Getting Your Kids to Help with Pesach Cleaning

More Passover Recipes and Cooking Tips at CookingManager.Com.

For more links, see Jacob Richman’s Passover Page.

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Glad Not to Have a Boy in This Dance

On the day before my first-grader’s siddur party to celebrate receiving her first prayer-book, she brought a note home from school. The teacher had written the following for my daughter to memorize: “I am honored to invite Mr. RH, head of the local education ministry, to say a few words.”  I asked her if she was happy to be chosen. “Why should I be happy?” she said. “YOU should be happy.”

My daughter really was excited about the party. Two years ago, my son got so fed up with rehearsals that he watched the performance with us, in the audience. At his party, they showed film clips of first-grade boys praying in the synagogue. The girls were filmed cleaning the house for Shabbat.

So I got nevous a few weeks before this year’s party when the boys in my daughter’s class were instructed to dress up as different occupations. The girls had to come as mommies, with scarves, hats and “elegant purses.” When my husband complained, the senior first-grade teacher didn’t understand. She asked if my daughter was upset.

In this year’s clip, the boys were carpenters, plumbers, doctors and businessmen while the girls taught, ironed and went to the grocery. At least they had a few businesswomen. The children did their tasks, looked at their watches, and stopped. Afterward the clip showed all the children in shul saying mincha (the afternoon prayer).  Having the girls say mincha in shul was rather progessive.

I took loads of pictures to practice, so I could get a a good shot of my daughter introducing the official. But she never got her chance, or I never got mine, because the official never showed up.

At least I was smart enough not to ask whether she was disappointed.

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Passover is coming and we need all the help we can get.

Sometimes we forget why kids should be involved in the Passover preparations.

• They’re learning important skills.
• They’re learning about the holiday.
• Even the most resistant children want to feel needed.
• You’ll have more time for yourself—and the kids.
• You won’t end up in an asylum.

Make a list of the jobs that need to get done. Don’t forget daily jobs, like sweeping, cooking,  and supervising small children. One year, my son offered to hang all the laundry in the weeks before Pesach.

Break jobs down into manageable segments of about half an hour each. Then gather the family and divide up the tasks. I let the kids choose.  This can be tricky because sometimes a smaller child picks a chore that is too challenging. Since I don’t like to refuse a genuine offer, I suggest that the child do part of the task, I do it with him, or I partner him with an older child. Sometimes, though, they surprise me.

If kids refuse to choose chores, pick for them or tell them they will get the jobs that are left.

Once chores have been divided, the children can make up a chart. Add your own errands and chores, so they can know your schedule. Take kids with you on errands if you can. My 13-year-old watched me bargain down two shoe salesmen last week. Think how much money I could have saved if my mother had taught me that skill.

Tips to Encourage Cooperation with Kids

• Don’t overdo the spring cleaning.
• Lower your expectations even more if you have small children. Expect to be interrupted frequently.
• Assign a start and end date for each job. One year my kids finished their rooms a day or two before the holiday, leaving me with several extra loads of laundry.
• Make sure each child knows what his or her job entails, including cleaning up afterward.
• Ask kids to prepare a play or a quiz game for the seder, or plan a family trip or party.
• Plan fun activities to break up chores, like the library, park, or museum.
• Go over the chores at the start of the day. Singling out one child sends the wrong message.
• Turn off the computer and TV during cleaning sessions. This helps adults too.
• If a child resists, try to find out why. She may not know where to start. When my 8-year-old resists, I interrupt his activity, take his hand, and firmly guide him toward the chore. It works best when I don’t talk at all.
• If the child does a poor job, plan your reaction carefully. Is it because of inexperience? Responding harshly may lead the child to resist more next time. But ignoring a shoddy job may get you more of the same in the future.
• Project the idea that this is a joint campaign. Sometimes it’s fun, and sometimes it’s not.
• Work to music.
• Offer a communal snack after a cleaning session.
• Turn on a timer and have everyone work for a set amount of time.
• If you run into problems, try not to respond in the thick of things. Schedule a meeting for a time when everyone is calm.

How have you encouraged your kids to get involved in Pesach preparations?

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The New England Journal of Medicine featured an article by the Israeli medical team that set up a field hospital less than 48 hours after a major earthquake hit Haiti. When there is so much suffering, whom do you help first?

Under normal circumstances, triage involves setting priorities among patients with conditions of various degrees of clinical urgency, to determine the order in which care will be delivered, presuming that it will ultimately be delivered to all. After the Haitian earthquake, however, it was impossible to treat everyone who needed care, and thus the first triage decision we often had to make was which patients we would accept and which would be denied treatment. We were forced to recognize that persons with the most urgent need for care are often the same ones who require the greatest expenditure of resources. Therefore, we first had to determine whether these patients’ lives could be saved.

Our triage algorithm consisted of three questions: How urgent is this patient’s condition? Do we have adequate resources to meet this patient’s needs? And assuming we admit this patient and provide the level of care required, can the patient’s life be saved?

In the first days of our deployment, most of the patients we saw had recently been removed from the rubble. The majority had limbs that were compromised by open, infected wounds. Untreated, open fractures meant infection, gas gangrene, and ultimately death. Clearly, the sooner after injury the patient received medical attention, the better his or her chances of survival. Late-arriving patients who already had sepsis had a poor chance of survival. But there was no clear cutoff time beyond which patients could not be saved; each case had to be evaluated individually.

Read the full article here: The Israeli Field Hospital in Haiti— Ethical Dilemmas in Early Disaster Response.

If you enjoyed this post, you might also like:

Israeli Soldiers Treat Palestinian Weapon Smugglers

West Bank Mama has a roundup of pro-Israel posts.

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Please check out the new banner that Leora of Here in Highland Park designed for CookingManager.Com. She also designed the banner for this blog.

Here at “A Mother in Israel” we’ve been known to poke fun at people who get too worked up about Pesach. But with the Passover holiday only a few weeks away, it’s time to start making plans. Here are four questions to ask yourself now to make your preparations easier.

• What food do you need to use up? Plan menus to include them. Don’t buy extra food that you will have to store or sell over the holiday. Is there any holiday food, like matzah, meat, or wine, that I need to order? Some readers have ordered items already.
• Who will be celebrating with you? Invite guests (or get invited) soon, before people make other plans.  Do you know someone who needs an invitation? How about day trips for  chol hamoed (intermediate days of the holiday)?
• What non-food items do you need to purchase? Take out last year’s post-Pesach list, where you wrote down kitchen supplies you needed to add or replace. Keep the list handy to compare prices. In Israel, household items drop in price closer to the holiday, and even more afterward..
• What tasks have you been putting off? Decide which ones need to be done before the holiday. I’m talking about things like mending, repairs, dry-cleaning, hanging pictures,or getting rid of unwanted items.

Related:

Post-Pesach Tips

The Pesach Problem

I’ve opened three Pesach discussions on the Cooking Manager fan page on Facebook:

Cleaning Your Kitchen for Passover

Passover Menus and Recipes

What’s in Your Freezer and Pantry (for ideas on using up food)

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We often hear stories about condoning cheating in Israeli schools, and in the religious sector as well. One a retired teacher told me she didn’t see anything wrong with it. She cheated as a student, and her children did, too.

So I found it refreshing when my daughter’s high school principal canceled this year’s hachtarah,   after senior girls texted answers to friends during an important exam. In Israeli religious schools the hachtarah rates somewhere between an American senior prom and homecoming. But instead of crowning a queen, they crown the Rabbanit Purim (rebbetzin, or rabbi’s wife). The focus is humor, not beauty.

The principal knew the girls wouldn’t give up on the event, so she asked the mayor to make sure it wouldn’t be local. The girls had to rent a hall in a neighboring town and sell tickets. My daughter and her friends wouldn’t go, and I’m curious how many showed up.

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Image by epSos.de via Flickr

My friend asked for a few posts on time management. “I don’t understand how you find time to cook, raise children, manage the house and write so much.”

The subject has been on my mind since I was asked to speak on time management at the Kishor Social Media Conference for professional Jewish women, organized by Debra Askanese and Sarah Lipman. For a summary see my guest post, Staying in Control of Social [...] Continue Reading…

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Despite having only seven players, the Northwest Yeshiva High School girls’ basketball team is in the Washington state tournament for the first time. But one of the games is scheduled for the fast of Esther tomorrow. If the yeshiva team ends up playing, they’ve decided to forfeit.

The school has asked the Washington Interscholatic Activities Authority, offering to partner with them financially, to allow the girls to play in the evening, even if they have to travel to the opponent’s [...] Continue Reading…

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The religious-Zionist community is still in shock about Rabbi Moti Elon, the yeshiva head accused of molesting young men who approached him for advice. In synagogue yesterday morning, our rabbi drew some conclusions about how we could prevent similar incidents in the future.

According to sociologist Max Weber there are three types of authority: traditional, legal-rational, and charismatic. Charismatic authority is the most powerful, yet the most unreliable and dangerous. Both children and adults need to think critically and even [...] Continue Reading…

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In recent days prominent rabbi Mordechai (Moti) Elon, founder of the religious Zionist outreach organization  Mibereshit, has been accused of sexual harassment of young men in counseling situations. The religious Zionist forum Takanah (mentioned in the case of the founder of Megeirot) learned of the allegations several years ago. In its statement, the first anyone heard of the story, Takanah reports on a deal with the rabbi to leave Jerusalem for the smaller, more isolated northern town of Migdal. [...] Continue Reading…

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