I have so many things I’ve been thinking about and working on lately that I want to share with you! Okay, let me just start with one thing and hopefully as time will allow I’ll be able to share about more of them.
On Thursday one of my closest friends from the US who is currently visiting Israel met me in Jerusalem. We had a wonderful three hours together, and though I always enjoy time with this friend, this visit was something even better than usual!
She met me at Shalva after Yirmiyahu’s last therapy session was over. We had initially planned to hang out and chat for our time together, which would have been great. But after I admired the one she was wearing and told her that earlier in the day I had been shopping at the Machane Yehuda open air marketplace to buy some scarves but couldn’t find something like what she had on, we decided to hop on a bus and do some scarf shopping in the Geula neighborhood where she had made her purchase. We strolled the streets of Geula, shopping, shmoozing, having pizza, shopping and shmoozing some more. I got a lot of great scarves (and enjoyed spending every single penny on myself), had a yummy piece of pizza, enjoyed being able to talk to a good friend who understands me (she responded to something I said with a hint of a smile and the comment, “Are you doing that self-sabotage thing again?” Oh, for the honesty of good friends!), and enjoyed the very unusual experience of spending time with a friend without kids around. (Well, Yirmiyahu was there but stayed asleep in the wrap most of the time.) I had such a thoroughly enjoyable time and felt so renewed, that it really made me think about why this kind of experience felt so unusual for me.
I’m not good at having fun for its own sake. I’m good at being responsible and well-thought out and getting things done. I try to be present and helpful to the important people in my life. I enjoy talking to friends and strangers, I’m a pretty positive person and I enjoy lots of things that I do throughout the day. I’m not so great at giving my own needs priority (another post hopefully coming up soon on how I’ve been addressing that lately) and as far as having fun…my kind of fun is being able to mark off all the to-do items in my planner at the end of a day. I operate from a strong sense of duty and fun isn’t my natural way of being. (If you’re familiar with the Myers Briggs personality system, you’ll recognize from this statement that I’m a J rather than a P – P personalities put fun before duty.)
But I felt so lighthearted and happy after my time with this friend, that I determined that I need to find more time to have fun just for fun. This ties in well with the self-nurturing stuff that I’m working on, but it’s going a little further. As a result of this awareness, I called to reserve a spot at a mother’s retreat in a couple of weeks, something I would usually not be able to justify – not the time away from my family nor the money spent. The friend who was trying with no luck to convince me to go with her was delighted to hear about my change of heart! As it turns out, all the spaces are taken so I’m now on the waiting list for a spot if someone drops out, and don’t know if I’ll end up going or not. But that’s okay. Just making the call and putting myself first, not because I’m desperate to get away (I’m not) or horribly unhappy (not at all – I’m feeling very blessed and happy with life) is a good change for me.
Do you also find it a conscious effort to have fun? What kind of things are fun for you? How do you make time for fun in your busy life? I’d love to hear your ideas!
When I got out of the hospital with Yirmiyahu on Sunday afternoon, my intention was to spend every bit of time together with our family possible before the upcoming four month separation. (I was going to go to the US for an extended period but after Yirmiyahu’s hospitalization we changed plans, and my husband will be leaving right after Pesach to be with dd18.) But man plans and G-d laughs.
We had a lovely seder, though I really felt dd18’s absence. The next day I began to have difficulty breathing. By the evening it was very, very hard to breathe and my husband mentioned that he was also starting to have trouble breathing. That was the beginning of the worst virus I’ve ever experienced in my life – every possible symptom you could have except ear pain, I had. Coughing, runny nose, stuffed up nose, chills, feverish, shaking, nausea, vomiting, pain in every part of my body, inability to eat, gastrointestinal upset and lungs that feel coated with phlegm. The first two days in bed I wasn’t aware of much that was going on around me; I had this weird feeling of seeing four dimensions of my mind opening at one time while I was tossing and turning (I know, it’s very weird and I don’t even know that that means but that’s what I felt). I woke up with my entire body sweating late Friday afternoon – did you know that your legs can sweat?:) – with my clothes and blanket damp, and it was like something broke – and was able to get up and light Shabbos candles.
I had to go right back to bed but was picturing being better by the next day. However, that was much too optimistic. (Dh went to the doctor and was told that it’s a virus and there’s nothing to do but wait it out. Of course all my home remedies are packed away for Pesach.) Right now it’s the fourth day and for the first time I can sit up and focus somewhat. I’m still very weak and it looks like I’ll be in bed for at least another day. I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to be up at least somewhat for the last day of Pesach. Dh has also been really sick but not as bad as me, so we’ve been bonding together by being sick together. 🙂
Dh was able to read when he was sick and was sharing with me some things he read. One article was about what to look for in a marriage partner. The article stated that you should look for a compatible life direction and life philosophy. He said that he thinks that what’s most important is a spouse who can roll with life’s punches and understand that things won’t always go the way you want, the way you plan, the way you expect.
I agreed, though I do think you have to start with the commonality of a shared life vision. You learn to deal with the twists and turns of life by going through them and you can’t really know how you’re going to handle a situation until you’re in the situation.
I’ve said this before: every single person is going to go through very difficult things in their lives. You can be as proactive as you can to take care of your health and invest in your marriage and your family and be financially responsible and interact with everyone in a respectful way – and you can avoid some problems, but there’s no way to avoid all of them. Every single person was put here in this world with a unique mission, and part of your mission is to be tested in some significant way to bring out something in you that easy times can’t bring out.
But that’s really an academic matter until you face it.
It’s natural to want to kick and scream ‘Unfair!’ when something bad happens to us. But at a certain point we have to move past that and find acceptance. When we get stuck insisting that life should be different, we make things so much harder for ourselves.
I want to share with you something very powerful that I love so much that I carried with me in my wallet for a long time. (Hmm, what happened to this when I moved?) I often read this to myself when I felt frustrated about something that wasn’t going my way in the course of the day and it always helped recenter me. It’s from the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, a book that focuses on practical spirituality; a good friend of ours who was a mashgiach ruchani in a major yeshiva in Israel told my husband that he was amazed how totally in line with Torah the principles of this book are.
“And acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing or situation — some fact of my life — unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment.
Nothing, absolutely nothing happens in God’s world by mistake. Until I could accept my alcoholism (I substitute whatever word is appropriate for my situation), I could not stay sober; unless I accept life completely on life’s terms, I cannot be happy. I need to concentrate not so much on what needs to be changed in the world as on what needs to be changed in me and in my attitudes.”
Isn’t that beautiful? I hope you find it as helpful as I have!
A number of months ago, I was going to write a post about the importance of appreciating each day as it is, as imperfect as it is. Because wherever you are today, however hard it seems, you don’t know what the next day holds. It’s important to actively appreciate each day for all that is good, and appreciate all the bad that hasn’t happened. Like that all your kids are in bed at night, and no one has broken an arm or had to go to the emergency room. The day after I mentally wrote this, one of our children was taken to the emergency room, and I remember thinking how glad I was that I had focused on what I had before I didn’t have it.
You don’t want hard times to be a wake up call that force you to see in retrospect that you missed out on enjoying the days you had because you were too busy looking at what was wrong.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. As much as I try to actively look for the good in each day, I can see so many things I didn’t appreciate. I didn’t appreciate my baby’s wet diaper, him moving his limbs or having the strength to make sounds. There are a lot of other things I didn’t appreciate until I didn’t have them.
At the hospital, I asked a nurse who was sighing heavily what was wrong, and she told me that things were hard. I asked her why, and she told me that she has to get ready for Pesach/Passover and that we women have hard lives. I said to her, “I hear what you’re saying, but right now I’d be very happy to be at home getting ready for Pesach.” Three weeks ago Pesach preparation seemed like something significant to deal with. Now it’s hardly a minor blip to me. I wasn’t preaching to her or saying her reality wasn’t valid, because of course it is. I was just sharing my perspective from my vantage point right now.
Yesterday I was feeling overwhelmed about the sequence of events lately, like everything in my life was shattering all around me. Thinking about all the things in my life that were good that I hadn’t appreciated enough made me feel even worse. I wanted the reassurance that this was as bad as it was going to get, that I had hit rock bottom and the only place to go was up. But if there were still good things left, I didn’t have that reassurance.
I’ve watched my life and the lives of others spiral down very quickly, frighteningly quickly. We want to feel like we’re in control of our lives and if we do the right things, life will proceed in a predictably pleasant way. We don’t want to think that despite our best efforts, things can shift in the blink of an eye. But today I was comforted when remembering this fact of life is two sided: it can always be worse, but it can also always be better. And just as things can get bad very quickly, they can also change for the better in an instant.
That thought gave me a lot of hope and perspective.
When we were determining if we should stay in Karmiel or move to a different more central area that would have better access for the services for Yirmiyahu, I made a list of all the positives about Karmiel. One thing that was hard for me to think of leaving was the natural beauty of Karmie that can be seen at every turn – we don’t have to look far or go out of our way to find it.
This may sound material, but it’s not. For me it’s a spiritual and emotional experience. Whether I’m literally having an outdoor experience by camping in a forest or just taking a walk locally and observing the scenery around me, I feel happier, more relaxed and more centered. Living here isn’t like living in a nature reserve by any means, but there are plenty of places for your eyes to rest on something beautiful. So when I saw the book Last Child in the Woods about nature deficit disorder in today’s generation of children the concept immediately resonated with me and the title itself seemed to validate my feeling about the importance of nature in our livess.
Unfortunately, that ebook wasn’t available to check out from my library, but fortunately, the follow-up book was – The Nature Principle. The book basically detailed different aspects of how people benefit by connecting to nature were discussed: physically, emotionally, pyschologically, socially. It’s a worthwhile read.
But you don’t need to read a book to know the restorative power that there is in having some quiet time in a beautiful place. I have my own special place just a fifteen minute walk away – the waterfall in Park Hagalil – and though I infrequently go there, just thinking about it makes me feel more relaxed and calm.
(l-r) spring 2012 – Ds9, ds6, ds4, ds2 cooling their legs in pond by waterfall
Then there are the many parks and green areas, the rolling hills surrounding the city, the amazing views that I keep discovering in different areas – even a little area where we discovered a number of woodchucks living – I love these things. There are edible plants all over (though I haven’t done much foraging lately I still love seeing them) and literally every single time I walk outside I see something that makes me feel happier inside.
Every time I come back to Karmiel after a day in one of the larger cities, I have this feeling of “Ahhhh, I’m so glad to be home….”
view from our window
So often I think how glad I am to be able to raise my children in a place where it’s normal for them to experience the natural world. Not having this would be a loss for me. There are conveniences in bigger cities but there’s also a loss when the buildings are so high and the only view you have is of more buildings and more buildings and more buildings…
I spent today traveling to Haifa and though I had plenty to do at home when I returned, instead I chose to watch the kids playing in the park a couple of minutes away, knowing that it would do more to help me recharge after a tiring day than anything else.
Seeing the beauty in nature helps me connect to myself, my creator, to be more patient and loving to others…when I’m having a hard time, being outdoors helps me find the quiet and clarity inside. I have a busy life and if I had to drive somewhere to have this experience, it would never happen. But fortunately, every day during my half an hour walk to pick up ds5 from kindergarten I can see beautiful sights without going out of my way!
I don’t think that beautiful natural surroundings are enough to make a person happy if their other important needs aren’t being met. I would have loved to live in a small village-like area but our family would have been unhappy with friends and schools for our kids being far away. We found a good balance for our family by moving to a centrally located, low density neighborhood in a small city, but you can find natural beauty everywhere – sometimes you just have to look harder!
Do you relate to the feeling of nature filling you up with something good, something important? What does it do for you?
This morning I finally sat down to go through last year’s planner and transfer any information that was still relevant to this year’s calendar. This is mostly phone numbers, but I also sometimes write down passing thoughts I want to remember and sometimes those are worth copying over again as well.
Usually I really enjoy this process, because as I flip through each week of the past year, I see notations about so many things that I enjoy remembering. Every year I delay in throwing away my old planner because it has so many good memories – actually, I didn’t throw away the planners for the three years prior to making aliyah until we moved to Israel! Today was the first time in years that this was a different kind of experience.
As I went through page after page, I began to have a sinking feeling in my stomach that got stronger and stronger. I always transfer the information at one sitting, to get it all done and then move on to something else. But without thinking consciously about what I was doing, I got up in the middle to make lunch, then realized I had done it to avoid seeing any more pages. Somehow living through the last year wasn’t so bad lived one day at a time, but to flash through so much of the last year in an hour’s time was overwhelming. Though I would tell anyone that it hasn’t been an easy 18 months, this is the first time that I emotionally felt how difficult it was.
Then I read a question that I had written many months ago: “How can I live a life I love right now?” Usually this kind of question is hard for me; I rarely have an instinctive answer and usually I have to stretch to think about what could make my life better. Today an immediate visceral response flashed through my mind. Naturally, the two things that came to mind aren’t things that I’m currently doing. 🙂
The reason I’m sharing this is because it’s all connected. There is potential for a different kind of experience the coming year when I can not just answer the question, but integrate the answer into my life. Not just for me, but for anyone who feels like they’d like to upgrade the quality of their lives.
It wasn’t fun looking through my planner, but it was productive!
Dd17 is great about doing crafts with the kids, and this Sukkos was no exception! The day or two before the holiday, she helped them make a beautiful diarama of a mini sukka, fully decorated inside with a table, chairs, paper chains hanging from the schach, and a table covered with tiny bowls of food (made of clay). She even affixed a light to the ceiling of the diarama!
She also helped them make the project below – a lulav and esrog.
Ds6, ds5, ds3 each with a homemade lulav and esrog
They used small pieces of bamboo for the lulav, and attached leaves for the hadasim and aravos. For the esrog, she gave them each two sections of an egg carton which they taped together and then covered with yellow fabric. I think she said she affixed the dark brown ‘pitom’ (tip of the esrog) by sticking it on top of a stick that was inserted inside the esrog. The littles had a great time making these and getting into the holiday spirit!
While she was doing this, the other kids were making decorations for the sukka – a neighbor gave them a package of colorful patterned paper, and I was amazed at their creativity – they made a couple of hanging decorations that looked like what you would buy in the store. They also made the prerequisite paper chains (doesn’t everyone make these?? I remember making these as a kid!), and drew pictures to hang on the walls.
Last year, a neighbor who has two sukkas and lives just a few houses away offered us the use of their second sukka for our meals. They used to live in our apartment and know that the porch isn’t very large, definitely not big enough for a family our size to eat meals together there. We appreciatively accepted their offer and enjoyed hosting guests in their spacious sukka last year, and made a small sukka on our porch that was used for sleeping in and for individuals to eat in for non-formal holiday meals. This year, the husband spoke to my husband and apologetically told him that as much as they’d like to, they couldn’t make the same offer since they were hosting large communal events that would require the use of both of their sukkahs. We were so grateful for the use of their sukka last year and certainly didn’t feel they owed us any kind of apology for not being able to do the same thing again!
We decided that we’d manage with our small porch sukka for meals. True, some of us would be eating inside the house and others in the sukka, which wasn’t a super festive atmosphere, but you can only work with what you have. Buying a freestanding wood sukka was not only expensive but would take time and energy that dh just didn’t have. Then less than a week before Sukkos, dh got a call from a friend who had moved from Karmiel a number of months ago – he had left his sukka behind in a storage unit, and would we like to have it? Since he and his wife were just two people, I couldn’t imagine it could possibly fit us, but it was 6 feet wide by 12 feet long – not super spacious for our family, but definitely room for us all. We happily accepted his offer, and dh and the kids spent late Friday afternoon assembling it. (At that time, dd16 asked me if the middles should be doing something to get ready for Shabbos instead, As to where we put it, we’re lucky to be on a culdesac, therefore most of the people in our building don’t use the parking lot next to our building since they’d rather park right in front. Our parking lot gets minimal traffic; no cars ever go into the furthest third of it, which is where we put our sukka. The lot is paved with brick and lined with flower bushes and there’s a beautiful view of the hills as well, so it was very pleasant and there was plenty of room for the kids to safely run around and play during the meals. We felt so glad to have a sukka where we could all have our meal together!
Then on Sunday (erev Sukkos), dh spent the first few hours of the morning with Yirmiyahu at the pediatrician because we were concerned that he had an upper respiratory infection and I was warned by a couple of parents of children with T21 to be vigilant about this because it can quickly turn into something more complicated. Directly from that appointment I took Yirmiyahu with me to catch a bus to Maalot, where he had an appointment for an ultrasound on his kidneys and bladder. The bus driver told me to get off at the wrong place, so I had to ask a couple of people for directions to get where I was really supposed to be. The second person I asked was American, and as we chatted, I found out that she had just made aliyah a few weeks ago. As we chatted even longer, I asked her name and realized she had emailed me during her pilot trip right after Yirmiyahu was born, wanting to learn about Karmiel. Such a small world!
The appointment was a whopping fifteen minutes of waiting, then five minutes for the ultrasound itself. Since I had a couple more hours to wait until the bus back to Karmiel would be leaving, I strolled around the shopping district and picked up some beautiful laminated posters for our sukka – though the kids had made some decorations, this is only our first year decorating a sukka here and I knew there would still be empty space to fill. When I got home it was an hour before Sukkos, so I had just enough time to put the posters up and admire what everyone had done to the sukka before my last minute holiday preparations.
A few hours before Sukkos began, a neighbor offered us a loveseat that she was giving away. We didn’t need it for our home and she put it outside right before Sukkos began for whoever wanted it to take it. A couple of hours later we were having dinner in the sukka when ds6 told me he was tired and asked to lay down somewhere. I couldn’t let him go home to sleep since even though it was close by, no one would be with him, but then I realized that this loveseat (which had been put just a short distance from the sukka and was easily moved closer) would provide a comfortable place for him to lie down right outside the sukka. It ended up being used by a number of the kids as a place to sit and relax during all of the meals. Ds19 and ds10 slept in that sukka the first night, the others slept in our porch sukka. Then the next night dh slept with most of the boys in the big sukka, and the girls slept in the porch sukka. Holiday style camping out. 🙂
We had a little Sukkos style excitement when the first afternoon, we had strong gusting winds at the very end of lunch which lifted the bamboo mats that covered the top right up, up and away! (I was inside the house with Yirmiyahu when this happened, so ds5 ran inside and breathlessly told me about what happened – “A huge wind suddenly blew off all the schach and I was frightened!”) Ds19 had tied the bamboo mats on to our porch sukka (since last year they were blown off into our neighbor’s yard and I wanted to avoid a repeat of that), but only on one side, so they were blown against the wall and rolled up under the eaves of the building- it was a good thing this happened at the end of the meal since we were left without a kosher sukka!
There are local simchas beis hashoeiva celebrations (can’t think how to succinctly translate that, sorry) every night at various synagogues; I hope to make it to one or two of them. Tomorrow morning I’m going with the girls to an event that’s been organized for mothers and daughters. It’s so nice to have so many holiday oriented activities that have been arranged for the community; it really adds to the feeling of immersion in the weeklong holiday.
Today I was home with eight sick kids. Yesterday there were seven, and the day before I started off with only four! A couple hours into that morning I had to go pick up dd17 from school because she was sick, too, and the rules are that they couldn’t let her go home herself, so we had five sick kids home by noon. 🙂
It’s actually been a nice period – I’m not glad everyone is sick, but it’s nice to have everyone home at once. My living room is filled with kids lined up on blankets on the floor (their choice – they seem to be enjoying the chance to camp out together) and on all the couches – our homestyle infirmary! But after a couple of people responded to me mentioning having eight sick kids home today, I was thinking about how easily it could be turned around to be something to grumble about. It reminds me of a kids’ book we used to have – there was a dual storyline; on the top of the page was the positive interpretation, and on the bottom of the page was the negative interpretation of the same event. And that’s really how life is, very open to our interpretation of things.
Many years ago I started keeping a gratitude notebook. I didn’t do this consistently – it’s been on and off since I was about 18 or 19. Since moving here, I’ve gotten out the habit of writing a gratitude list every night before bed, just because I didn’t think to keep a notebook next to my bed when we moved (got to do that now that I’m consciously thinking about it!).
But even so, I’ve still tried to make mental gratitude lists, and often will write things down when I have a scrap of paper in front of me. Tonight I was writing some things in my planner at the end of today, since I had empty space in today’s date, and decided to share some of them with you. Don’t think I have a perfect life and nothing to focus on but the positive – I have challenges just like everyone, but it helps me keep my spirits up when I focus on the many blessings I experience every day.
As you’ll see in my list below, I don’t write about the big things – being able to walk, talk, see, breathe – which are in and of themselves so huge and amazing that if we really thought about the significance of them, we’d never find anything to complain about. I write about the smaller mundane things. We all have lots of these, but sometimes we have to attune our eyes to seeing the blessings around us all the time.
no missiles fell in northern Israel today (they’ve been raining down in the south these last few days from terrorists) and we don’t have to live with the fear that we have thirty seconds to get to safety
kids are all sick but are sleeping a lot and with the exception of one, not complaining much
was able to salvage most of the carrots that were beginning to get soft due to heat
ate three healthy and nutritious meals today
dh took stroller down the stairs of our building for me when I went to the park with the littles so I wouldn’t have to carry it
took the littles to the park and enjoyed the wonderful feeling of sun shining on us
a neighbor smiled at me on my way into the building
my mother brought another kilogram of powdered vitamin C when she visited six weeks ago, and I got a few bottles of grape juice on sale last week – just in time to have on hand for this bout of sickness
had plenty of toilet paper for the kids to blow their nose on (we’ve used about twenty plus rolls in the last few days)
my arms and legs were feeling very weak and achy this morning, and I was afraid I was coming down with what the kids have – but pushed myself to do a fifteen minute workout since I mentally committed to it last night – and when I finished, all the achiness was gone (the benefit of pumping my lymph system?)
got all the laundry washed – no dirty clothes left anywhere in the house!
washed all the dishes and enjoyed seeing an empty sink for a little while
the clothes dry quickly in warm weather like this
got call to remind me about parenting class (I had mentally mixed up the day it was held with another class) and thanks to this didn’t miss tonight’s class
parenting instructor voluntarily made a call for me to school advisor of one of kids’ after hearing difficulty I was having reaching him
instructor understood significance of idea I shared despite my concern that in Hebrew I couldn’t express the depth properly
after two weeks of work, dh’s employer told him he wants to give him a raise (he was told when hired that it would be four months before it would be considered)
had a refreshing afternoon nap
someone gifted us with four school sweatshirts at our front door (don’t know who but we appreciate it!)
got a ride home from the parenting class to right in front of my building
someone saved me some food from dinner and I didn’t have to prepare something to eat when I got home
dh went out to buy more toilet paper and diapers without me mentioning it and saved me the trip
diapers happened to be on sale just when we needed them
we’re centrally located and don’t need a car; a walk to the store is just five minutes
borrowed two English books that I’ll enjoy reading with the kids
littles were still up when I got back so I could tell them goodnight
once they went to sleep, enjoyed listening to a Torah lecture with dd15
took the clothes that had dried in before it started raining
There are a lot more things I could write about, but you get the point! I try to write or think of at least ten things a day, which isn’t hard once you get used to looking for them. However, that can be intimidating in the beginning. I heard the suggestion at a lecture to try to stop once a day and just think of two things to be grateful for, and this alone can help shift your perception dramatically.
Focusing on noticing all that I have has been huge for me in helping me become a more positive person. I’ve also increasingly come to believe that we draw more miracles and blessings into our life when we notice all that are already present. So if you want more good things to come into your life, start noticing all that’s already there!
I’ve just spent a few days away with my family, and had the most relaxing time since moving to Israel!
Exactly a year ago, our family spent five days in Colonial Williamsburg. As we were walking through the historic village, dh and I were discussing the possibility of moving to Israel. We were coming to the conclusion that we’d make the move. And I remember expressing to dh a bit of sadness that our trip to Colonial Williamsburg, which was fantastic, was the last one we were likely to take. I knew that if we moved to Israel, our reality (at least initially) would preclude funds and a vehicle to make outings and trip as frequent as they were for us in the US, and that thought made me sad.
When we moved here in August, it was just a week and a half before the school year started, and we jumped immediately into real life – no time (or money) for enjoying trips in our new country. I’ve always appreciated and enjoyed going places with our children, and as grateful as I am for the reality of waking up every day in Israel, I do have a bit of wistfulness about not currently being in a position to actively explore the country. Public transportation is expensive and complicated for a family our size, and finding a place to stay overnight on a budget with a big family isn’t easy. And on the savings we’ve tried hard to stretch until we have income coming in, there really wasn’t room for the luxury of a big trip.
All of this background is just to go and show you that G-d cares about and provides for even our small wants! Just a couple of weeks ago, someone from Tzfat (Safed) called to invite our family for Shabbos! This was someone I met 3.5 years ago, when the wife was visiting the US and stayed at our home for Shabbos, and we touched base again after moving here when I called her to ask about school options in her area. They have a two bedroom vacation unit attached to their home that we’d be able to use, and were fine with us coming for a couple days longer than just Shabbos. Wasn’t that wonderful?
A few days ago, I was waiting at a bus stop with ds4 and ds5, when an older woman commented on how cute ds4’s dimples are. I smiled back at her and told her that it’s a gift from Heaven. She agreed, and told me that she’s chiloni (secular), but she believes in G-d. I smiled.
A minute later, I glanced in her direction and she looked as if she wanted to say something to me. She then said, “I keep looking at you because I can see you’re a religious woman and I want to ask for your help with something.” So I told her I don’t know how helpful I can be, but I’m happy to help if I can.
She continued, “Even though I’m secular, I truly believe there is a G-d. But sometimes I feel a heavy weight on my heart. What do you think I can do about this?” Now, that’s a big question to answer while waiting for a bus that was supposed to arrive in about two minutes!
I’m not a spiritual counselor or anything like that, but generally I would ask someone more about what they were feeling if they said something like this to me. That not being an option, I told her the following.
“I can only tell you what has been helpful for me personally, and that’s to try to speak to G-d directly. I don’t mean formal prayer from a prayerbook or in a synagogue, because sometimes people do that but there’s still a disconnect (stumbled here while I tried to remember the word I needed in Hebrew) between the heart and the head. Intellectually you know G-d is there but you still don’t feel it. I mean just talking throughout the day to Him, asking for whatever you need.”
“If I need to be somewhere by a certain time time and am waiting for a bus, I ask G-d to send me the bus you need, and thank Him when He does. If I’m in the store shopping, I ask Him to help me find the groceries I need within your my budget, that whatever money I have will be enough. Little things like that. G-d truly is our father, He cares about us and wants us to be happy, and He’s always there for us – but we have to move towards Him. When I speak to Him and I see He answers me, it helps me to feel more connected.”
The bus pulled up as I was finishing saying this, so I warmly wished her well and she thanked me very warmly, too.
Spirituality is very individual and everyone finds their own answers to their search for meaning and deeper connection.
What would you have said if you were asked this? Would you have found this a helpful suggestion, or would you have suggested something different entirely?
We catered the entire bar mitzva weekend ourselves – this meant cooking for three meals, plus the kiddush. Friday night we had 25 people, for the kiddush there were around 200 (lots of kids!), for the main bar mitzva meal we had about 80, and for shalosh seudos (the third Sabbath meal), we had under 25.
This was definitely more work than hiring someone but: 1) in Karmiel there are no caterers so arranging catering from another city would have been complicated, and 2) we catered the kiddush for our last bar mitzva 5.5 years ago because it was a very busy time in our lives, and were extremely disappointed with the quantity, setup, and service.
I’ll backtrack for a minute and share with you that scenario – ten minutes before everyone entered the social hall, I came in and was horrified – a couple of other adults who saw it were also shocked – there had been just one table set up for men and women in the entire hall. Never, ever were receptions were set up in this way, and they had sent enough food for just one table! I had to ask that everything be rearranged at the last minute (the people who came down early immediately told the catering staff how it was supposed to be and started moving table around).
The young man who had been left in charge was very belligerent and unhelpful (the caterer had three events that weekend and wasn’t there), insisting it was all done just as it should have been. I had to have my kids run home with a baby stroller and bring back lots of food that I had for our main meal after the kiddush – kugels, salad, and big bags of cherries – to compensate for the caterer bringing enough for only half of the number we had paid for. I told the person in charge that I realized a mistake had been made, and asked him to put out the stuff we brought so the tables wouldn’t look empty. The worker was very upset at us – I think he was new to the job and insecure about it, and he didn’t want this to reflect badly on him – and though we thanked him repeatedly for his work and told him mistakes happen, we knew it wasn’t his fault – it was very, very stressful and unpleasant.
After the kiddush we took back whatever was left – the things we brought in addition to a small amount of cake and kugel the caterer had provided (which we ended up throwing away in a dumpster because it was so dry and unappetizing). When I spoke to the caterer after Shabbos, I was told that his worker claimed there was plenty of food (yes, because I brought so much!) and the proof was that there was food left over that I took home. I explained that I took back the food I had brought since I needed it for our meal following the kiddush, and there was only a small pan of the other things left that wasn’t what we had brought that I took back, but the clear implication was that I was lying. So no apology, no compensation – just accusations at me.
This was really upsetting to me because I was being treated like a manipulative liar, when I had been extremely reasonable about the entire situation, and really thought that there had been a mistake and the caterer would be embarrassed about this huge bungle. When I delegate something like this, I accept that if I’m not doing it, it’s going to be however it is – and as long as it falls into the range of acceptable, I don’t nitpick and I don’t micromanage – I trust whoever’s in charge to take care of things. He was more concerned about covering his ego and wouldn’t admit anything had been done wrong. The irony is that my husband had no idea of all that was going on behind the scenes of the setup – there was no time to tell him – and thanked the caterer publicly earlier that morning when he spoke, for the amazing kiddush that was so much nicer than we had expected! So our kiddush ended up being a feather in the cap for the caterer, and only a handful of people who saw things at the beginning knew that it was because I had worked hard in a very short amount of time to salvage what would have been a disaster.
I had people who told me right away that morning they’d back up what they saw if necessary when I spoke to the caterer (it was really bad), and could have made a big deal about this and insist on having part of the money paid refunded, but I just wanted to wash my hands of having to deal with the entire situation; we had paid in cash in advance so there was no leverage, and we would have had to fight for it. So in short, we paid a lot of money for the privilege of having all of it ‘taken care of for us’.
I wanted something different this time! By cooking and baking everything ourselves, it allowed us to have a variety and abundance of foods that we would have had to pay a lot to have had. Also, most caterers here seem to have the same basic menu, which is a lot of carbs that are all the same color (beige/brown/white), and I like when food on the table is visually appealing.
We did the baking for the kiddush the week before, mostly, and froze the cakes.The cooking was done entirely from Weds. evening through Friday morning. It may sound like a marathon but it really wasn’t – dd15 kept saying she felt like there should be more to do than there was.
For the bar mitzva kiddush (reception), we were told the norm here is cakes, drinks, fish (eg pickled herring), yerushalmi kugel, and sometimes crackers, dips, fruits and vegetables. Initially I considered this, but didn’t really like the idea since it made things more complicated with set up and clean up. I also feel like people are going home to a full Shabbos lunch, and I don’t need to provide a full meal for all of them before that. So I decided that I didn’t have to do that just because everyone else did, and would instead have just cakes and drinks.
(Below, ds4 helping spread filling for a the layer cake.)
Bar mitzva kiddush:
chocolate layer cake
6 layer strawberry cake
orange marmalade layer cake
oatmeal chocolate chip cookies
chocolate dipped shortbread cookies
chocolate chip loaf
chocolate chip pie
lemon pound cake
checkerboard cake
raspberry squares
fudge crinkles
chocolate cake
carrot cake
coconut snowballs
chocolate balls
marble cake
cinnamon blondies
peanut butter balls
A couple of people sent over yummy treats to put out, fancy looking concoctions that added a nice look to the dessert platters we put out, but I don’t know what they’re called. We took everything over to the hall before Shabbos, and set up for the kiddush late Friday night, including arranging all the platters. This was done by dd15, dd17, ds18, two 19 yo male guests, one 18yo female guest, dd11, and me. They all did a great job making the platters look fabulous. We covered the platters and put them on the tables, and the next morning we just had to uncover them when we got back from morning services. Very low pressure.
I heard yesterday from three different people how nice the kiddush was, and how impressive the many kinds of cake were – each of them had been told about it by several other people! That was very nice to hear, but we all felt good about how it went even before this – the tables looked nice and we had plenty for everyone.
200 challah rolls waiting to be baked
Bar mitzva meal:
First course –
homemade challah rolls
guacamole
hummus
Mediteranean chickpea salad
tomato onion salad
sweet carrot salad
coleslaw
cucumber salad
cauliflower salad
sweet-sour pepper salad with sesame seeds, almonds, craisins
savory carrot salad
Main course –
cholent (bean barley stew)
chicken
yerushalmi kugel (made by a friend)
sweet noodle kugel (made by a friend)
potato kugel
kishke (baked stuffing)
Dessert –
choice of lemon or strawberry pudding layer cake
We had the main meal in the same place as the kiddush, so we had to clear up from the kiddush before we could set up for the meal. When we got there from morning services, we had an hour before the kiddush began, and I used that time to begin cutting up the kugels and warming them up. A couple who came from Efrat for the bar mitzva came in to the kitchen to help, and cut up all the chicken, which was a big job.
After the kiddush, ds18 and three nineteen year old guests moved all the tables and chairs into place for the meal. Initially I had planned to set up the food buffet style, but realized that though it sounded easier, it would end up much more chaotic. So I decided to serve family style, which is what I do at home – I don’t like plating meals since I prefer for people to take the amount they want, of what they want.
Some younger guests who were around offered to help set the tables (their families were there for the kiddush and stayed for the meal) – I had so much help that I had to work hard to keep up with them all! While the tables were being set up, I was preparing dishes of salad for each table, so that they could be put on the table before everyone sat down to eat.
For the main course, I put out the kugels on the platters while everyone was still eating the first course – I could have asked someone to come in and help, but particularly my older girls and our 18yo guest had done so much that I really didn’t want to ask them to do more. They’re also entitled to enjoy the simcha! This was a big change from the hectic help of before the meal, when I had at least eight girls between the ages of 6 – 12 who kept coming in and asking for things to do, in addition to the help of the older girls. I kind of enjoyed the quiet; it wasn’t pressured at all. While I was setting up these platters, the older girls came in to the kitchen and began taking platters out to the tables.
Once I sat down to enjoy the main course, I didn’t get back up again. I let other people clear the serving platters and bring out individual plates of pudding cake, while I chatted with dear friends who came from Raanana. I stayed there chatting for a couple of hours, and didn’t do anymore food prep until it was time for shalosh seudos.
At that point, we rearranged the tables and chairs – again! – and set up for an informal shalosh seudos – rather than individual place settings, I set up buffet style – a pile of plates, napkins, cups, a basket of challah rolls, and then large serving bowls of salads and platters of kugel (planned leftovers from the main lunch meal). People began eating whenever they got there.
Then there was the final cleanup after Shabbos. All in all, it was a lot of work, but it didn’t feel tense or overwhelming at any time. And we were able to spend a lot less while getting a lot more.
How much did all of this cost? Dh took out 1200 shekels from the ATM and that went towards food and miscellaneous bar mitzva costs that came up (in addition to using some of our regular food budget money) but I don’t have any idea how it breaks down – honestly, it seems to me like it was too much. With all that was going on, we didn’t track the specific breakdown like we usually did. We spent an additional 400 shekels on paper goods. And the hall rental was 1100 shekels.
When figuring the total spent, I’m not taking into account that we have enough leftover chicken for another three or four Shabbosim, or any other leftovers that we’ll use at a different time (eg papergoods). Without working out the actual cost of what we used only for the bar mitva itself, we spent a total of 2700 shekels for the hall rental and catering for the entire weekend – at today’s exchange rate, this is equivalent to $715.
Considering that for our last bar mitzva over five years ago, we spent $1200 on catering for just the kiddush itself (and I already said how woefully inadequate the caterer’s provisions and set up were), we’re quite pleased that we were able to have the kind of event that we wanted without any compromises, while staying within a frugal budget!
