Online Conferences, Passover Baby Names and Unequal Accommodations

Butterfly and Syrian thistle

Butterfly and Syrian Thistle at Givat Gad

I hope you have all had a wonderful Pesach. Aside from a tiyul or two, I’ve been busy preparing talks for two online conferences. I want to thank the many friends and readers contributed pictures that I used in the presentations.

If you’ve never attended an online conference, you may wonder how it works. After you register and pay, you get to hear a range of international top-notch speakers without having to leave your house. You can stop and start the lectures whenever you want, invite your friends to join you, and re-play the talks you enjoyed most.

iMothering runs between May 12 and June 16, 2013, during which registrants have access to all lectures. In fact, I’ve already recorded my talk on Home Cooking for Real Families: Tools and Tips for Quick and Healthy Meals. I’m looking forward to hearing two of my favorite authors: Carlos Gonzalez on Why Children Won’t Eat and Naomi Stadlen on Rethinking the Term “Working Mother.”  And I learned a lot from the two other speakers I heard at previous online conferences:  Helen Ball, who will talk on How Babies Sleep, and Diana Cassar-Uhl, who will share tips on Responding to Criticism. You can see the entire conference schedule here.

Registration for iMothering is in full swing. Go to the iMothering website to register and get on the mailing list to find out about special offers, including discounts and a free registration.

My second talk, a cultural presentation on Breastfeeding in Israel: Modern Challenges in an Ancient Land,  takes place on May 23 at the online GOLD lactation conference for breastfeeding professionals.  The conference runs from April 16 through May 31, 2013. Participants can hear the talks live in a chat room,  and listen to the recordings as many times as they want until the end of the conference. Sign up here to hear the free keynote lecture by Dr. Alison Steube, Building a Breastfeeding Culture Using the Six Sources of Influence, on April 23 at 7:00 PM and 16:00 PM PST. Some of the lectures at this one are highly technical, while others are more general. Go here for the schedule, or watch this video.

Let me know if you are planning to attend either conference—I would love to see you there!

In other news, I published a guest post on Passover Baby Names over at the Nameberry blog.

Finally, in “Not Exactly a Seat of Honor,” Rivka Lambert Adler laments the poor treatment women get in the Orthodox world, calling it “a lack of derech eretz. Here’s only one example:

Item: Though my husband and I were the first ones at a concert of Jewish music being held in an Orthodox shul, and despite the fact that I was charged the same ticket price as the men, I was told I must sit in the cramped women’s section behind tables two rows deep and to the left of the performer. Men had their choice of seats facing the performer and had plenty of room to dance. A man who came 45 minutes late was able to sit two rows from the performer.

She also refers to Rahel’s guest post on the situation of women who come to pray at the Western Wall. Rahel visited the Kotel again over Pesach and will be sharing more photos, so watch this space.