Adventures in Mama-Land

In historical Judaism, freedom and imprisonment are just two sides of the same möbius strip. Inner and outer freedom is the prime concept of the Torah and of Jewish tradition. Yet in Judaism, freedom is at once freely given and at the same time, never without a price tag. Captivity plays an almost schizophrenic role in the Tanach, and indeed, throughout Jewish history. On one hand, we find the prisonless society described in Exodus. But then, there is the forced captivity of an innocent described in the laws of the “yefes toar” – the beautiful woman taken in battle. And, though Judaism is far from an ascetic tradition, both ancient and modern Judaism have glorified, to an almost grotesque extent, the concept of spiritual redemption through imprisonment. How do these seemingly opposite concepts build upon and complement each other? And of what use are they in the modern world? Our culture is widely assumed to be “Judeo-Christian” in character, but little remains today of the idealistic ...

Every year we’re in Toronto, and for years before we made aliyah, my mother hosts a shalosh seudos for the ladies of our shul.  For some reason, my mother’s shalosh seudos always manages to fall out on a different parsha, so I can’t repeat what I’ve said in previous years. If you’re curious, here are some of these masterpieces from previous years… Parshas Chukas (2009) Parshas Re’eh (2010) Parshas Chukas (2011 – I guess it has sometimes repeated) Parshas Devarim/Chazon (2013) Parshas Pinchas (2015) The point being - I had to start from scratch looking at this week’s combined parsha – Matos-Masei. There is a very shocking section near the beginning of this week’s parsha. It’s connected with what we read two weeks ago in parshas Balak. Back then, the people of Moav and Midian sent women in to seduce the men of Bnei Yisrael – not just physically, our commentators tell us, but spiritually, leading the Jewish men into worshiping idols. Now, it’s time for revenge. Interestingly, we’...

How are parsha books like popcorn?  You can’t have just one!  If you’re anything like our family, you already have a preponderance of parsha books.  But it’s impossible to have “enough,” isn’t it?  Especially when it comes to finding great kids’ parsha books that are both appealing to kids and reflect your family’s hashkafa (religious outlook).  And especially if the author isn’t afraid to do something a little different.  So when the chance to review a new parsha book that combines words and pictures in an innovative new format came along, I got a bit excited.  There’s a good chance that this book may be just right for your family. For my review, I received free from the publisher both the hardcover Every Picture Tells a Story Volume One:  Bereishis (Menorah Books: 2014) and the accompanying softcover colouring book : Aren’t those great covers?  They’re bilingual!  And they tell you exactly what you’re going to get inside....

(Or, how I secretly want to continue homeschooling once we arrive in Israel… but you knew that already, didn’t you?) I wasn’t sure where to post this, and actually began posting it to my aliyah blog , but decided it was more homeschooly, so now I’m switching it to here. Homeschooling is legal in Israel, but we have already decided we cannot do it – and, more importantly, that it’s in the kids’ best interests to go to school.  I posted about this before (apparently in July 2011, so we’re probably due for an update) but I will sum up the 3 main reasons: Socialization – not in general, because homeschooled kids DO socialize, but they will need to make friends fast and although there are chugim (extra-curricular activities), youth groups, shul, and homeschooler get-togethers,  school is the best way to do that. Language – I want them to learn Hebrew immediately.  School is perhaps a brutal way to do that, but it’s fast and everybody says they become fluent within months...

Haven’t done one of these in a good while, but at least I have come up with a catchy name for them:  Parsha Skills Worksheets (click to see previous worksheets). My goal with these is to introduce some basic Chumash vocabulary and grammar (to kids AND their parents!), reinforce it through fun activities, and give kids the confidence to read/write an actual passuk from each weekly parsha.  Somebody at the Torah Home Ed Conference mentioned dictation, and although I hadn’t given it much thought in connection with these, it seems like a fairly natural progression, so I have added a note at the end of the last page, following the “spelling test” (which is in itself a form of dictation):  If student is very comfortable with the vocabulary, dictate the copywork verse to him/her. Read it aloud twice first, very slowly. Then, let the student write (on a lined page) as much as he/she remembers. Praise the student for effort, not exact duplication of the passuk. By the way, I ...

First of all, one of my biggest happy impressions – as always, when speaking to homeschoolers in the US – was, thank goodness I live in Canada!  While other people talk about curriculum and reporting and consulting and government interference and accountability, I basically sit back and close my eyes and wait for all that boring stuff to be over. In case you are in the U.S., let me explain what we had to do, in terms of accountability and paperwork, when we decided to homeschool our two youngest children:  we decided to homeschool them.  Period.  The law here is a bit blurry and opinions are divided on whether it’s necessary to file a Notice of Intent to Homeschool if your kids have never been in school.  Anyway, we never have, for the younger kids (both older kids have been officially “homeschooled” at one time or another, as this is required to take certain Ministry-funded high school correspondence courses). But that’s not really a conference thing, just m...

Oy, vey!  Vendors, Curriculum, Yay! I’ve already posted about everything BUT the conference.  Turns out, there is just too much to say to put even the conference stuff into a single post.  So I’ll start with what seemed to me the biggest difference from previous years – limudei kodesh vendors and curriculum creators. All the cravings I’ve had in the past years for booths and vendors and people talking up their materials, all my wildest curriculum-crazed dreams, came true - a little bit.   Not, probably, in the way they would have if I were Christian attending a Christian homeschool conference, in which case I’d have dozens of programs to choose from for every little subject (Bible-based handwriting, anybody?  Faith-based science or history curriculum?).  But, as I say, a little. As an outsider, this seems to have been the year in which something tipped and suddenly, people are realizing that frum people are homeschooling (gasp! regardless of occas...

… it’s a book! Well, a very, VERY preliminary draft of a book.  And yes, it’s taken about two weeks longer to get to this point than I was hoping.  This delay will ultimately benefit you, my readers; I promise!  I finally whipped it into shape enough that I printed a draft at Staples (coil-bound, for easy correction… which is good, cuz I’ve already spotted some errors).  Drat, forgot to buy a red pencil – that’s what it REALLY needs. But if I say so myself, it’s looking very much like… a book.  :-) Here are some sneaky sneak previews.  If you were aghast at the parsha narrations I have provided here over the years, rest assured that the quality of the writing is WAaaaay better in this print version.  I am often appalled but am forcing myself not to be ashamed or to scrap anything unless it’s absolutely unsalvageable.      A few things I have tried to do better in the print version: Fewer exclamation marks! Uniform and consiste...

Yes, indeed; you heard that right… exactly what I’ve been hoping for:  I got an email late last night suggesting that Part 2 is officially in the works! Apparently, the new volume “covers the rest of Lech Lecha and has very upgraded worksheets as well as chazara [review] tools.” Naturally, I suggested that he arrange to come and show the thing as a vendor at the upcoming Torah Home Education Conference in May! Bright Beginnings is the Chumash workbook we have been working our way slooooowly through since July of 2011.  It’s cute, it’s fun, and I have found that its method of emphasizing roots and prefixes is very sound and appropriate for this level, while the layout is visually more appealing than almost anything I have seen in a limudei kodesh text. Here’s a typical page from Bright Beginnings: It’s not too busy – engaging, but not distracting.  There’s enough interaction, but also enough focus on just reading and getting the job done.  It’s true that we ha...

I was previewing this (reasonably good, and free!) second-grade Chumash workbook on chinuch.org and I was puttering along through a preview of the book when I came upon this page: And I was like, “what the heck is an esnachta ?”  Let alone drawing one.  Let alone finding one. Now, don’t laugh if you have known this since birth – this must happen to baalei teshuvah all the time.  Because it turns out I do know what an esnachta (etnachta, to some) is… the thingamabob I have always thought of as the “spur,” the rodeo-inspired doohickey I gradually worked out for myself over a period of not days or weeks but YEARS.  If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you will – you’ve seen them all over the place in the Chumash.  It’s the little red thing underneath this word: That’s an Esnachta.  The word, and the doohickey.  All on my own, I learned that besides being trop (Torah cantillation marks), which I usually ignore, it was ALSO crucial grammatica...

“…unschool, have fun, skip the drudgery, and pick it up over the course of two years when you are older -- IF you've been motivated to do so.” Wow. Every once in a while, I come across something exciting in the Torah-blog world.  If I’m lucky, it crosses paths with my interest in homeschooling.  And if I’m super-duper lucky, it counts as a fabulous find that I want to ask all my readers to click through and check out for themselves. This is from arijess over at Homeschool Chumash, a blog I read intermittently, and I feel super-privileged to have pulled it up in my blog reader today, of all days, when she has posted something I consider truly revolutionary. I don’t disagree with her, by the way, even though I will likely not unschool any particular subjects.  I like teaching the kids, I like exploring with them, I like having a roadmap and knowing which way we’re going.  These are my limitations – or, perhaps, just my parameters: the things we should all know abou...

Here’s Naomi Rivka working through two pessukim of Lech Lecha in her Bright Beginnings workbook. The first one is Passuk 12, which we've been working on since just after Pesach.  Our step-by-step method is:  First, vocabulary - using homemade cut-ups, examine some of the new or tricky words.  Second, read the passuk in the workbook, line by line, in Hebrew and English.  Third, line by line in Hebrew only.  Finally, close the book and say the entire passuk from memory.  When we are first starting a passuk, we don't do it from memory, but instead, say it 3 times together without looking at the book. We repeat this procedure for the last SIX pessukim we have learned, finishing with the most recent passuk.  So, for example, we’re now on Passuk 13, so we learn 7-13.  For a while, we were doing all of them, from 1-whatever, but it got to be too much for her.  I told her that once a MONTH, ie the first time we do chumash after Rosh Chodesh...

Yes, we really DID do school this week.  In fact, because we were still in the break between Parks & Rec 9-week sessions, we probably did MORE school than we usually do, and certainly more than we will accomplish next week. However… I mentioned that I’ve been sick and miserable;  I actually woke up voiceless on Tuesday and wasn’t able to speak at all until Friday morning.  So our emphasis this week was on subjects that teach themselves, anything that comes in audiobook form, and anything I could teach in a whisper. A couple of highlights: LATIN!  The kids are both loving our Song School Latin program.  We’re in Week 6, and so far, this program is so light it doesn’t really feel like school.  They both beg to do more than one song a week, but I figure we’ll pace ourselves and it’s great keeping it light and easy.     Here they are singing this week’s song with the help of these puppets.  The puppets are in the back of the book, but ...